how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. February 6, 1778. The treaties of amity and commerce were promptly offered. Q. Podcast: Libert, Unit, Egalit. 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. General Washington in the American Revolution. It did contribute to the huge French debt that was the root cause of the French Revolution by accepting Military and economic assisstance from France during the American Revolution. Vergennes admitted that open assistance to the United States meant war, but war was in any case inevitable. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. 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. Deane and Beaumarchais were already fast friends, working in harmony to load the Hortalez fleet with war supplies. Sixty years after his death the incredible truth came out. France remains the center of political activity, and here, therefore, I should choose to be employed., He went on to suggest how Franklin and Deane might be erased altogether. Vergennes decided that honor was preferable to peace, faced down an ultimatum from England, and got the two Navy ships safely to sea, where they would have to take their chances with the British warships waiting for them. It was a fine moment for his debut. The first British protests were made to the French ambassador, Noailles, who blandly replied that in a great nation there are many turbulent spirits eager to run after adventures. He did not attempt to have his turbulent compatriots released from prison. The Bahamas, too, acted as allies. By early 1775 the British embassy in France estimated that war supplies worth 32,000,000 livres (about $6,000,000) had been shipped from that kingdom to the colonies. It ultimately did nothing of the sort, and its calling is usually . 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. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. In the kindest of letters, Gardoqui explained the situation to the approaching envoy and suggested a meeting on the French side of the border. 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. 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. He was the unifying force of the Revolution, the one man who could understand and use effectively the complex elements which composed it. 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. 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. Lord North had instructed him to explore the possibility of a truce on terms short of independence, and William Eden had given him an unsigned letter to show Franklin and Deane (the British too avoided Arthur Lee) which declared that England was ready to make great concessionsshort of independence. Spain had ceased her royal aids to America. By September, 1775, the crusader was back in Versailles, and with Vergennes intensified the campaign to draw the King into their dangerous project of largescale aid to the colonies. The American Revolution had a multifaceted effect in France, extending the national debt, contributing . However, he had proved to himself more than once that prodigies could result from careful planning and unstinted effort. Then he captured the Kings packet, England registered the expected sense of outrage; the whole country seethed with the news. answer choices. 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. He was a smaller copy of Robert Morris and aspired to become a great international merchant like his friend. The American people had shown their power. The small matter was to be Conynghams capture of another British packet, this time the one plying to Holland. 1. War profiteering was pandemic. Spain had been fighting Portugal in South America and had favored just such an alliance with the hope of getting Portugal as her share of the plunder. Franklin, bobbing a thermometer over the Reprisal s rail to take the temperatures of the Gulf Stream, could think about the life of the sea, this western Atlantic and warm Caribbean which nature had chosen as the home for the new race of Americans. With the appointment of the mission to France the affairs of the two secret committees were theoretically unscrambled; the commissioners were to take charge of foreign relations, and young Tom Morris of commercial matters. Even Vergennes was now lukewarm. 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. And Spanish concurrence in the alliance must be won. The two men had been on fairly close terms in Congress, where Deane had sat from the first day as a delegate from Connecticut. She had stolen Hollands priority on the seas and had swept France from the American continent and the best part of her fisheries. The capture of the Bastille ignited one of the greatest social upheavals in Western . Then he tried to tempt Deane with the honours and emoluments which the King would bestow on him if he brought about a reconciliation. Friends, and in French, amis! It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. Captain Pearson of the Speedwell had orders to follow any suspected American ship out to the open sea and there arrest her. Carmichael wrote a strong-action letter to William Bingham on Martinique, mincing no words as to the policy being carried out in France: I think your situation of singular consequence to bring on a war so necessary to assure our independence, and which the weak system of this court seems studiously to avoid. The dreadful thing is that Arthur Lees nightmare was accepted by perfectly sane men and that it not only outlived the Eighteenth Century but has persisted in a shadowy form into the Twentieth. 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. His, Privateers could accomplish wonders, but they could not fight the great British ships of the line. It turned out that the French warships had been sent with orders to protect not only the islands of Louis XVI, but also any American vessels in the area. Part 2 focuses on the French land and naval forces that assisted the U.S. in combating the British military. There must be a breaking point somewhere in his patience. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. 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. In their eyes she was still colonial, an outlying province of Europe. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. took place in France and India. During the last eighteen months Conyngham had been in and out of the port, always hull down before the British realized he had vanished, and this time they were determined to get him. Behind the benevolent smile lurked the master of intrigue, skillfully maneuvering the vacillating courts of Europe. The American Revolution occurred during a period that some historians refer to as the "Second Hundred Years War" between France and Britain. Nor had Vergennes, who was extremely cool in his calculations. The glorious news of General Gatess victory at Saratoga reached Passy about the first of December, 1777, by a Charleston ship, and on the fourth it was confirmed by Jonathan Loring Austin, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War, who had rushed to France in a specially chartered vessel. 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. George III, faced with plain warnings from Bancroft and Wentworth that a French alliance was pending, would not believe them. Vergennes kept him safe in jail, for the minister was co-operating with Franklins policy up to a dangerous point. The conversation continued with this sort of exchange, and Franklin kept it going for two hours. If Vergennes had any doubts about Franklins grasp of Bourbon aims, they were resolved by the Doctors masterly letter of January 5. He had made Saratoga possible. 2. If he had written the true story of his life as a drama no audience would have believed it. There was nothing to do but restore the packet and the brig to England and order the arrest of Conyngham and his crew. 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 order to make the war effective he reminded Vergennes of things Vergennes could do. But the harm had been done. It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution. 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. Since the previous summer he had had the invaluable help of an unpaid deputy, William Carmichael. Naval affairs were stagnant; the privateers attracted all the able seamen. 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. The islet of St. Eustatia, an international free port in the northern Leewards, was a fountainhead of what Samuel Adams called the Unum Necessarium . By late June the captain and his men were released from jail, and the Revenge was loaded with powder and arms. His beloved wife had died, and his best friend Robert Morris had thrown him over because he had told the truth about Tom. After France entered on February 6th, 1778 in the American Revolutionary War, the British naval force - master of the seas - and French fleet confronted each other from the beginning. A year ago America had been a counter on the board of Old World rivalries, a piece to be moved here and there as the calculations of the powers dictated. He signed only his initials. In the summer of 1775 Colonel Henry Tucker, whose clan dominated island affairs, came to Philadelphia in a state of worry and resentment. The chief results of the mission were the snuffing out of Prussia as a potential ally, and the theft of Lees papers by a professional burglar hired by the British ambassador. When Stormont appeared at Versailles Vergennes assured him that the Reprisal and her prizes had been ordered to leave French waters within 24 hours. Revolutionary leadership of George Washington Head of the colonial forces. On the third day of May he seized the, Conyngham was still in the Dunkirk jail, the only safe place for him. His sense of competition for the favor of America was plain in the letter he immediately wrote the French ambassador at Madrid. The fight for American independence piqued the interest of Europe's most powerful colonial powers. The Continental Navy would never be able to take on the larger British units. There were sixty-odd American merchants established in Nantes, and when Franklin considered that all this activity was being repeated on a somewhat smaller scale in Bordeaux, Lorient, Le Havre, and Dunkirk, he felt that the Franco-American alliance was already a reality. Wickes got clean away, only to founder in a storm off the Banks of Newfoundland. It made the French . Patrick Henry delivering his famous speech on the Rights of the Colonies, before the . Both revolutions began due to the financial problems in their countries. 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. 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. A disguised British vessel at Dunkirk had alerted the warships, and as soon as the, By the middle of July Vergennes had made up his mind to ask the King for armed intervention. Ferreiro, Larrie D. Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France & Spain Who Saved It. 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. Between 1778 and 1782 the French provided supplies, arms and ammunition, uniforms, and, most importantly, troops and naval support to the beleaguered Continental Army. Louis XVI was making a new advance of 3,000,000 livres to Congress. Through English friends Franklin raised funds to give the prisoners warm clothes and blankets, food, a chance to bathe and wash their clothes, and spending money for small comforts. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. His friend Sieur Montaudoin bought a great Dutch ship and named it, Silas Deane was invaluable. But his most important work was with the new firm of Hortalez & Company, which really meant the House of Bourbon. Sailcloth and shoes, embroidered waistcoats and fusils, cannon and wig powder were crated and piled on the docks for shipment to the country that needed everything. Young Gustavus Conyngham of the landed Irish gentry had emigrated as a boy to Philadelphia where his relatives were prominent shipping merchants. His emotional balance was precarious. Yet Franklin had a high opinion of the human race and lofty hopes for his particular segment of it. His first wife soon died and he married the daughter of a great political familyand switched to politics. He was the Edward Edwards of the secret service, the master spy of the century. Franklin and Deane now wrote the committee urging action in every sea where British carried on commerce. Arthur Lees secretary, Major John Thornton, was not only British but British secret service. Soon the old names were changed to the Committee of Foreign Affairs and the Commercial Committee to make this distinction clear. Nearing France, Dr. Franklin changed the captains orders. Tom Morris was dragging out the last months of his wretched life, and Lee saw no point in beating a dead horse. A blacksmiths son, he had worked his way through Yale and had started to practice law when he married the daughter of a great merchant family. Vergennes would promise to investigate the matter, which meant that Stormont had lost a point. Vergennes had patiently dissembled Frances violations of neutrality in one encounter after the other with Stormont. With Deane and Carmichael, and all those shadowy young Americans who helped the great privateering drive of 1777, he organized an underground system for escapes. Instead of using direct pressure he used leverage. Though still reeling from the loss of its American colonies at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the country remained a global power with a strong army and navy. And finally Franklin played his trump card, the possibility that America might be forced back into the British Empire unless some powerful aid is given us or some strong diversion be made in our favor. He knew that the Bourbon nightmare was the picture of Britain, reunited with her American colonies, sweeping Spain from the lower Mississippi and both Bourbon powers from the Caribbean. By September Congress lamentable trade embargo would include the West Indies, and no more mainland produce would be sent Bermuda, which meant a galloping famine. 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.. He was to steal all original papers possible from the commissioners, and copy others. Anthony Todd, secretary of the General Post Office, read Franklins letters to people in England. Dr. Bancroft was an old friend of Franklins from his London days. The estimate means little, for the British were slow in discovering the tremendous scope of the activities abetted by Vergennes. He was the mutant of a new species. Focusing on the British government and the problems it faced in 1764, explained why its ministers considered introducing a stamp tax in colonial America. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. Secret aid was no longer sufficient, he argued, for the British claimed that the policy of the Bourbons was to destroy England by means of the Americans, and America by means of the British. A swarm of workmen then changed the marks of the vessels by slapping on new coats of paint, changing the figurehead, and such devices. Every Tuesday evening an agent of Stormont would pick up the letter and leave another with new instructions. These were proposed by your friend [A. Lee], evaded by his colleagues.. Deane arranged to meet Wentworth at dinner a day or so later, and Franklin took care to tell the minister what was afoot. The memoir to Vergennes asked for a French loan of 2,000,000 (which Congress had hopefully requested) . Deanes griefs were personal. The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. During Franklins years in London he had watched the old power pattern repeat itself. These British snoopers were the very ones who had quarantined the American powder runners in Amsterdam in 1774, and they came with orders to burn the Revenge if she sailed out. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the U.S. as an independent nation and promoted trade between France and America. If General Howe had guessed that, he could have ended the war then and there. Every man aboard was lost except the cook. 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. Before they escaped they were furnished money and instructions about English allies who would get them across the Channel, and French merchants at the ports who would then take care of them. 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. Robert Morris alcoholic half brother Thomas had just been appointed by Congress as its commercial agent for all of France. When Deane arrived in Paris in the summer of 1776 Arthur Lee rushed over from London. Beaumarchais wrote masterly letters to Louis XVI, arguing that with timely secret help from France the Americans would win their war and clip Britains wings. All this was excruciating, since Lee had trumpeted in letters home that he had the ministry and Hortalez in his pocket. Vergennes was so disheartened by the bad news which had arrived even before these disasters were known, and he so much dreaded a sudden declaration of war by Britain, that in August he formally closed the ports of France to American privateers and their prizes. The British take Charleston, S.C., capture a large patriot army, and deal the rebels one of their worst defeats of the war. These reports were written in invisible ink between the lines of love letters addressed to Mr. Grard, calling at Passy that evening, gave the commissioners a full report of the Cabinet meeting. He went back to London in a fury. American morale was so low that only the immediate entrance of France into the war could put heart into the country. 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. According to Doniol, Franklin dealt through Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes, a great shipping merchant, and the savant Dr. Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. French ships engaged British vessels almost immediately after Britain declared war on France in March of 1778. Late in May Captain Wickes made a cruise quite around Ireland in company with two other captains and captured eighteen small vessels. Hodge was not released until the last of the fishing fleet was safely home in France. He had made Saratoga possible. 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. Bancroft was to report on the movements of American privateers and trading vessels in European waters, and relations between the West Indies and continental America. The time had come to invite Wentworth in. Some inner mechanism in the Lee genes transmuted whatever was wrong with the Lees into something much worse that was wrong with their enemies. Franklin immediately got to work at this dismal situation. Inequality of Rights. When they arrived at Martinique, the Americans were so cordially received that Bingham settled down as resident agent for Congress. 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. 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. One of his parts was acting as confidential agent for the King, for his circumspection was as profound as Franklins. May 12, 1780. In his contract Bancroft agreed to a long list of particulars. 3. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. Captain Conyngham had lost his ship on the last voyage, and was given command of the Surprise , a lugger newly bought for Congress. 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. The American victory secured critical financial support from the French. 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. The Charleston move is part of a broader British strategy to hang on to the southern colonies, at least, now that the war is stalemated in Pennsylvania and New York. He only succeeded in quarreling with them both, and when he tried to see Vergennes, he was quite properly snubbed. But he had met Deane, and wrote him asking for a rendezvous, hinting that he had come to promote peace. The port records were similarly camouflaged. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. Above all we needed an ally. William Lee was appointed joint commercial agent for France to checkmate Robert Morris brother. 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.. Communications with Congress were rapidly being snuffed out by the capture of dispatches on the high seas and even more by the skill of British agents in intercepting letters, especially those bound for America. 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. He left the rack ruined in fortune, health, and mind, and openly went over to the British. Our want of powder is inconceivable, wrote Washington in the bitter early days of the Revolution. France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. He and his friend the Marquis de Bouille, the new governor of Martinique, had a privateer fleet with American masters and French and Spanish crews which was making itself felt in the Caribbean. 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. They all hated and feared Britain as the newly dominant nation of Europe. 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. To license content, please contact licenses [at] americanheritage.com. William Lee opened the campaign against Deane in a letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee. One of Conynghams prizes was recaptured by the British, who took her into Yarmouth. Thus torn from its context, the military side of the Revolution is implausible.). He had put up for a long time with colonial violations of the trading laws, but when the Boston Tea Party made him look ridiculous, George III precipitated the war. Franklin dealt with these suicidal moves in his usual oblique fashion. 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.. This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. The Comte de Vergennes. Franklin insisted on British recognition of American independence and refused to consider a peace separate from France, America's staunch ally. Franco-American Alliance, (Feb. 6, 1778), agreement by France to furnish critically needed military aid and loans to the 13 insurgent American colonies, often considered the turning point of the U.S. War of Independence. He wrote home that in the fighting there had been good order and readiness equal to anything of the kind in the best ships of the kings fleet.. Even though some consider King Louis to just be a contributor he .

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