France and the American Revolution. 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. He had made Saratoga possible. It made the French . 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. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. William Lee was appointed joint commercial agent for France to checkmate Robert Morris brother. The joint conquest was proposed of Canada, the Floridas, and the British West Indies. They might refit in the island ports, stock up their magazines, cruise the Caribbean, and bring their prizes in to St. Pierre for judgment in Mr. Binghams court of admiralty. Franklins most pressing assignment was to buy or borrow eight battleships from France and to urge both Bourbon powers, France and Spain, to send fleets at their own expense to act in concert with these ships. Nearing France, Dr. Franklin changed the captains orders. 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. 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. The two Lees and Izard were busily writing letters about the expected alliance. 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. Then he captured the Kings packet Swallow , running between Falmouth and Lisbon. Franklin had a share in preserving the friendship between the mainland and Bermuda at a moment when it was severely strained. 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. The prevention of anarchy and civil unrest. Americas first decisive victory held the promise of the final one at Yorktown. 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. His friend Sieur Montaudoin bought a great Dutch ship and named it, Silas Deane was invaluable. His background was no more humble than Franklins, but his friend could dress like a Quaker while Deane amassed a huge wardrobe of velvets and satins and drained his private purse entertaining his new French acquaintances. It curtailed foreign trade at the moment when the country, which produced almost nothing useful in war, most needed to increase imports. During the struggle for American independence, France provided the money, troops, armament, military leadership, and naval support that tipped the balance of military power and paved the way for the Continental Army's ultimate victory. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. The commissioners had written privately to Robert Morris that his brother must be removed, but their letters were not received for months. On his first escape from Old Mill in 1779, Conyngham tunneled out with 53 companions. Bancroft belonged to the American patriot group in London and wrote able papers defending the cause of the thirteen colonies. Native American groups had to choose the loyalist or patriot causeor somehow maintain a neutral stance during the Revolutionary War. The islet of St. Eustatia, an international free port in the northern Leewards, was a fountainhead of what Samuel Adams called the Unum Necessarium . 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. Congress had appointed Jefferson as the third commissioner, but he had declined to serve because of his wifes illness, and the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress rushed their man in as substitute. French forces under Rochambeau landed at Rhode Island in 1780, which they fortified before linking up with Washington in 1781. However, Franklin was a wizard at intrigue, and many secrets lie with him in the Christ Church burying ground. Sitting together in Deanes hotel while the crowds outside waited for a glimpse of their idol, the two men were already dreading the arrival of Arthur Lee as their colleague. (We must remember that all this was happening before Lexington.). A sensible man would have liquidated Hortalez & Company at once. 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. Americans, for instance, were forbidden to trade directly with foreign countries or with the foreign islands of the Caribbean, except in a few commodities which could be sold under cumbersome and expensive restrictions. On the very day the French ministry decided for the alliance, Paul Wentworth was back in Paris. Focusing on the British government and the problems it faced in 1764, explained why its ministers considered introducing a stamp tax in colonial America. However, when Franklin arrived in Paris, Bancroft was in an ideal position to watch the Kings most dangerous enemy, and he made a good bargain with the secret service. The Comte de Vergennes. It meant only the familiar rite of changing the property on paper. Sieur Montaudoin shared many interests with Franklin; both were members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, enthusiasts of the new physiocratic school, and Masons. From May, 1777, to May, 1778, Congress would receive no direct word from its mission in Paris. Continental Congress established the Secret Committee of Correspondence to publicize the American cause in Europe. It is hard to see how the patriots could have started their war, or kept it going, without the help of the islanders. 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.. Whether this was one of the patriotic conspiracies for which he risked his life that year scarcely matters, for the contraband traffic would have gone merrily on if Benjamin Franklin had never existed. His sense of competition for the favor of America was plain in the letter he immediately wrote the French ambassador at Madrid. She anchored in Quiberon Bay with her prizes, and Franklin made a bone-racking journey overland by post chaise. This tax was given to the people to help settle the debt of the war, and it started an argument of "taxation without representation". 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. 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. Stormont was instructed to tell Vergennes that the Rebels game was up. He was lulled by the specious truce with Francebut how would he feel if Captain Wickes captured a royal packet carrying the royal mails? The trouble with Silas Deane was tragically simple: he was never quite sure who he was. 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. 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. However, the Grand Duke was not receiving Mr. Izard or any American, so he remained in Paris near William Lee, who had been similarly repulsed by two courts: Vienna and Berlin. The memoir to Vergennes asked for a French loan of 2,000,000 (which Congress had hopefully requested) . He made for the English Channel, where he took four small merchantmen, which he sent to Lorient under prize masters. 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. Arguably the key French contribution to the war came during the Yorktown campaign. 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 . Franklin had already planned his mission to France, where he would be joined by his fellow commissioners, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. The Secret Committee, dominated by the capable merchant Robert Morris, methodized the smuggling of war supplies from Europe, which had been going on for years. How did the French Alliance contribute to the American Revolution? Franklin knew that Vergennes, who for years had befriended America, would scuttle her the instant she ceased to serve his purpose. 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. He was the unifying force of the Revolution, the one man who could understand and use effectively the complex elements which composed it. On July 14 a mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris looking for arms to protect itself from the king's forces. And Franklin, Voltaire, and Rousseau were linked together as the presiding geniuses of the century. Besides, five British warships blockaded the harbor. Following hard on the American Revolution (1776-83), the sweeping aside of the French feudal order demonstrated the irresistible rise of freedom and enlightenment. While Spain's influence on the Revolutionary War was significant, perhaps the most profound impact was the broader American Revolution's impact on Spain. Hoping to calm down the furor, Franklin appeared in public as little as possible. The commissioners drew on it for their expenses, for the purchase of war supplies, for building three frigates in Holland and France, and for keeping up the maritime war in European waters. In the matter of the Hortalez ships, it was Vergennes who had yielded. Wentworths connection with the secret service was not suspected; Franklin regarded him as a former patriot who had joined the Tory ranks and must be treated with caution. However, Beaumarchais put his whole soul into his character as friend of the American Revolution. The alliance of France with the American Patriots started on February 6, 1778, when the King of France signed a treaty with Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. And the French people, cheering in the streets and squares, were as proud of Saratoga, he wrote home, as if it had been a Victory of their own Troops over their own Enemies.. He welcomed routine, even a pernicious routine, but any crisis produced a violent reaction. At any rate, they had bobbed up in Philadelphia and obtained the first publicized arms contract between Congress and foreign shippers. Since this ruined Arthur Lees flattering picture of himself as Americas first envoy to Madrid, he was enraged. He waited until the Revenge was safely out of Dunkirk, and then he and the commissioners exchanged letters, purely to clear the record, about the necessity of France abiding by her treaties, which meant no more violations by American privateers. In that short interval he had seen his people take up arms for a desperate war, declare themselves a nation, and make the first cautious moves in foreign relations. France Allied with American Colonies. America, Franklin retorted, is ready to fight fifty years to win it.. This rule was so thoroughly disobeyed that great shipping houses like Willing & Morris of Philadelphia kept factors, or at least correspondents, all over Europe and the Caribbean to take care of their trade. The traffic which had started about 1770 was very large. From 1790 to 1794, the revolutionaries grew increasingly radical. France, planning a war of revenge, saw in the growing revolt of the thirteen colonies a chance to weaken her chronic enemy, and by 1766 she was ready to rush to their support if they broke with England. Wickes got clean away, only to founder in a storm off the Banks of Newfoundland. The Sugar Act, was made to try and stop the smuggling of sugar and molasses. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. 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. The Doctor was adept at working through trusted friends, and his friends were legion. Since the previous summer he had had the invaluable help of an unpaid deputy, William Carmichael. Arthur Lee, who would have ruined the secret project if he had been in Paris to interfere with it, was busy elsewhere. 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. If he had been a mere speculator in gunrunning like many of his compatriots, or an appropriator of Bourbon funds, as Arthur Lee claimed, he would have seen that the game was up. The news of Howes occupation of Philadelphia arrived in November as the climax of an excruciating period in which Franklins own campaign had reached a stalemate. 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. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . Getting a fleet for Washington was high on Franklins agenda. You cant at this time, he wrote, be unacquainted with the faithless principles, the low, dirty intrigue, the selfish views, & the wicked arts of a certain race of Men, &, believe me, a full crop of these qualities you sent in the first instance from Philadelphia to Paris., Arthur Lee then followed with a letter to Samuel Adams which revealed his definite plan to supplant Franklin. Young Gustavus Conyngham of the landed Irish gentry had emigrated as a boy to Philadelphia where his relatives were prominent shipping merchants. He was the Edward Edwards of the secret service, the master spy of the century. He agreed to investigate the matter. Every Tuesday evening an agent of Stormont would pick up the letter and leave another with new instructions. It was a long time before this contract with the Farmers General could be satisfied, since few ships could now run the British blockade of the American seaboard. To forestall a truce with Britain, the ministers had stipulated that the United States must make no peace that surrendered her independence. 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. No man of his century could approach Franklin as a subtle and effective propagandist. Accordingly, the Doctor held his peace. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Like Great Britain, France had a young king. The British were methodical. 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. If Vergennes had any doubts about Franklins grasp of Bourbon aims, they were resolved by the Doctors masterly letter of January 5. During this period of watchful waiting, Franklin applied political pressure. Inequality of Rights. 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. Lee could not bear to lose Beaumarchais and tried to detach him from Deane. The stench of treachery was in the air. He was also making them a gift of 375,000 livres. Deane arranged to meet Wentworth at dinner a day or so later, and Franklin took care to tell the minister what was afoot. He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. Johnson was captured and sent to the Old Mill, from which he soon escaped. The bogus company functioned as a legitimate business house, paying cash for its purchases and keeping its connection with Versailles a secret even from the American leaders. Morris was as stubborn as George III about refusing to believe bad news, but when he was finally convinced of his mistake he was full of contrition. only affected North America. 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). They sent eight of them to France and got back safely. The time had come to invite Wentworth in. 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. A few hours later Vergennes warned his royal master that it looked very much as if Britain had at last offered America her independence, opening the way to an alliance with the motherland. If France refused armed intervention, the Americans prayed the wise kings advice, whether to try to get help from some other power, or to make offers of peace to Britain on condition of their Independency being acknowledged.. Silas Deane was invaluable. Floridablancas policies prevailed; he wanted to keep the United States too weak to threaten Spanish possessions in America. Before he left Philadelphia Franklin had written with Morris certain instructions for Captain Wickes: he was to cruise against the British in their home waters, and bring his prizes into a French port. To Vergennes, Americans were shedding their blood in order to bleed England. Wentworth did not give up, and in a conference the next day he offered America a few more concessions, purely on his own authority. The thirteen colonies were in the nightmare situation of trying to fight the strongest power in the Western world almost barehanded. Conyngham shook them off and began the most spectacular cruise of the war. Then and then only did he dissolve his company, which had spent over 42,000,000 livres, mostly for America, and most of it never paid back. A box tree on the south terrace of the Tuileries Gardens had a convenient hollow under the trunk, and into this hole a bottle containing the gallant letter was let down by a string. British Debt. 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. The British drive through the Jerseys threatened Philadelphia, and in December Congress evacuated to Baltimore, where it remained until February. It was run, personally and in great detail, by George III himself, who spent hours reading the reports of agents scattered over America, the West Indies, and Europe. His Amphitrite and Mercure were already home, having delivered their supplies at Portsmouthgunpowder and blankets and clothing, sixty cannon, and 12,000 stand of arms. With great fanfare Lee proposed to make Prussia a second France. He had never outgrown some early drive to make the blacksmiths son a great gentleman. The French people saw that a revolt could be successfuleven against a major . There was no good news at Passy. The southern states were crammed with tobacco, which could not even be sent up along the coast because of the British cruisers on patrol. Contemporaries experienced the French Revolution as a set of interlocking changes or stages that seemed driven by some kind of mechanism or impetus. 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. 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. It was February, and the ominous shift in the ministry from the friendly Grimaldi to the hostile Floridablanca was taking place. E . Since George III was violently against a war with the Bourbons these warnings disturbed him, but they did not change his fixed purpose to bully the colonies into obedience. Without changing his normal contacts Franklin could easily have guided a conspiracy to make the Revolution a reality instead of a lost cause. He refused, when his mission was over, to return to his once beloved Paris. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. 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. The Treaty of Alliance (1778) between the United State and France was signed February 6, 1778. 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. Thus torn from its context, the military side of the Revolution is implausible.). His emotional balance was precarious. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. Franklin and Morris could hardly have believed Captain Wickes news on his return to Philadelphia if a courier had not come back from Europe at the same time with even more wonderful tidings. Nothing was a dead secret at Passy. 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. When hostilities first erupted, the crown did . His widening circle of intimates included people of great influence: Masons, scientists and scholars, men and women of the aristocracy. As a weapon of war the British secret service was remarkably effective. The second . New York: Random House, 2015. 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. After that opening wedge, which tacitly killed the embargo, Franklins resolution for world trade was bound to go through. He had made Saratoga possible. His private period of turmoil and decision lay behind him, and he could think calmly of what must be done to make Jeffersons great charter a reality. Wentworth, he wrote North, is an avowed stock jobber and I never let that go out of my mind. All that was needed was to add up the amount of money the mission had received, and then tell the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress that Franklin and Deane had stolen it. 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. They were the victims of their friends in Congress, who believed in promiscuous diplomacy as a device for distributing patronage. His new cutter, the Revenge , had been bought by William Hodge of Philadelphia, who had also obtained Conynghams first ship. How long could he continue? Washington was the War Department, Robert Morris at various times was Treasury and Navy and always was Commerce, and Franklin was the Department of State. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. He helped Beaumarchais buy and fit out eight ships, prudently scattered in various ports: the Amphitrite, Mercure, Flammand, Mre Bobie, Seine, Thrse, Amelia , and Marie Catherine . 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. This must not happen again. 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. Meanwhile Arthur Lee and his younger brother William joined the floating malcontents who supported the flamboyant John Wilkes and helped elect him lord mayor of London late in 1774. Contrary winds kept the Reprisal from entering the Loire to make the port of Nantes. 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. Captain Pearson of the, The islet of St. Eustatia, an international free port in the northern Leewards, was a fountainhead of what Samuel Adams called the, To the citizens of Nantes the alliance was not merely a commercial bond, but a blend of credos and enthusiasms which they shared with their friends overseas. Britain won the Seven Years War and imposed the Peace of Paris which bred the next cycle of conflict with the Continental powers. The Bahamas, too, acted as allies. It is the House of Crommelin at Amsterdam which is chiefly concerned in this trade with the Colonies, tho some others have their share., 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. 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. He went back to London in a fury. 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. As was demonstrated at the Battle of Yorktown, the French alliance was decisive for the cause of American independence. The Nantucket half of Franklin was always strong, and he longed to see how the captain and ship behaved in an engagement. The story goes that he was rushing to play the stock market, and no doubt he was. was part of a larger war between Britain and France. The two Lee brothers in Congress saw that their brothers in London were put in posts of influence. France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. 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. He had connived in the Conyngham raid in the confidence that the next time Stormont came fuming into his Cabinet with threats of war, he could hand the pestiferous ambassador his portfolio and wish him a pleasant old age in England. Conyngham was still in the Dunkirk jail, the only safe place for him. 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. 2. He only succeeded in quarreling with them both, and when he tried to see Vergennes, he was quite properly snubbed. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. Franklin soon warned Congress not to enlarge its connections with this questionable pair. 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.

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