how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

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. He spent much of the latter half of 1776 in Paris as mentor to the inexperienced American, and the close friendship thus begun lasted as long as Deane lived. Explain the purpose of a colonial stamp tax, how it would be implemented and which people or groups it would affect. The conversation continued with this sort of exchange, and Franklin kept it going for two hours. The greater part of the American seaboard was tightly blockaded, and the whole Atlantic was so unsafe that Dutch shipments to Statia now went out under heavy convoy. He had spent eighteen years in England as colonial agent and the last eighteen months at home in the Continental Congress. 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. The destinations given were usually French ports on the Channel, and the ostensible purpose was the sudden enormous need for arms in the French slave trade. Much paper would be required for their letter campaign, and a spate of words would cover their omission of proofs. Getting a fleet for Washington was high on Franklins agenda. 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. 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. In their eyes she was still colonial, an outlying province of Europe. Introduction. 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. Some of them were British merchants; others were American sea captains who could be trusted to deliver letters or verbal messages to people on the Continent. William Lee was appointed joint commercial agent for France to checkmate Robert Morris brother. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. A sensible man would have liquidated Hortalez & Company at once. He was delighted to find his brother William waiting for him in Paris. 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. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Hortalez & Company now became what it had always pretended to bea private concernand he kept on sending supplies to the United States until after Yorktown. 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. These crucial French contributions exemplify the global character of the . Vergennes promptly granted the requested interview. Now she was acknowledged as a nation in her own right, a nation whose treaties protected her commerce on the seas and her growing space on land, a rising people for whose friendship Britain and France must compete. 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. Born in Massachusetts in 1744, Bancroft was just of age when he settled in London, but he was already a notable scientist and writer. Much of the maddening delay in dispatching the ships was caused by Vergennes. "Rear alliance"), aiming at allying with countries situated on the opposite side or "in the back" of an adversary, in order to open a second front encircling the adversary and thus re . In 1776, Louis XVI was just 22 years old and had been king for only two years. Lord North relayed the meticulous royal commands to the secret service, whose active head during the war was William Eden, a genius at directing espionage. The story of his amazing accomplishments, of his diplomatic feats, of his wizardry in supplying the Continental armies, of his struggles with envious fellow commissioners, scheming enemies, and vacillating friendsthis is the burden of Helen Augurs new book, The Secret War of Independence (Duell, Sloan and PearceLittle, Brown). And so the man who believed that there never was a good war or a bad peace, old Dr. Benjamin Franklin, a man laden with the worlds honors who might easily have pleaded age and weariness, set out for France in his seventy-first year to secure these necessities for his country. Our want of powder is inconceivable, wrote Washington in the bitter early days of the Revolution. Continental Congress established the Secret Committee of Correspondence to publicize the American cause in Europe. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. took place in France and India. B.) By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. 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. The currency had fallen to half its value. Floridablancas policies prevailed; he wanted to keep the United States too weak to threaten Spanish possessions in America. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Intended as a defensive alliance, it saw France provide both supplies . 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. But Beaumarchais was on a crusade for American independence, and he would not drop it until independence was won. father of philippine opera; carver high school columbus, ga football roster; robert cabal cause of death; . The situation at home was alarming. His emotional balance was precarious. When Vergenness orders came through to sell the Revenge , nobody was alarmed. Apprehensive as he was about Britain, Vergennes risked war to release Captain Wickes and Captain Henry Johnson, who had sailed in company with him on the Irish cruise, from their long protective arrest in port. His widening circle of intimates included people of great influence: Masons, scientists and scholars, men and women of the aristocracy. His sense of competition for the favor of America was plain in the letter he immediately wrote the French ambassador at Madrid. A young girl began having strange fits. Vergennes, on that December day of jubilation, did some cooler thinking of his own and rightly guessed that the British would try to effect a conciliation with the Americans before they won any more campaigns. Schooled in the Caribbean trade, he was ready for the ticklish work of running arms from Europe before the war began, and displayed such gifts for evading British snoopers in a highly spectacular way that their reports on Conyngham had the quality of a picaresque saga. 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. 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. All this was so familiar to Franklin that it did not discourage him; he simply had to be on his guard for the moment when Vergennes would stop playing for the joint interests of both countries and play for France alone. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. He wrote Lord North that the agent has shewn great zeal and dispatch in the business he had so handsomely undertaken and ably accomplished.. Contrary winds kept the Reprisal from entering the Loire to make the port of Nantes. Conyngham lusted for his fine new cutter, which mounted 14 six-pounders and 22 swivels, and would have a crew of more than a hundred American and French seamen. This treaty was a promise from France to help the fight against the British. If General Howe had guessed that, he could have ended the war then and there. 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. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. 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. Masonry was powerful in France and all-powerful in Nantes, and for perhaps a generation its exporters had been sending American brothers, along with bills of lading and business papers, sheaves of French Masonic literature in exchange for similar pamphlets from the colonies. 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. 1783. A few days later Louis XVI made the United States a loan of 2,000,000 livres. Then, when the diplomatic pressure eased, he would stealthily release them one at a time. D.) It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. The American Revolution had a multifaceted effect in France, extending the national debt, contributing . Edmund Pendleton was, according to John Adams . A new nation had emerged, and in time each individual would realize his new identity. Franklin and Deane were at the top of that long list. French involvement in the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1783 began in 1776 when the Kingdom of France secretly shipped supplies to the Continental Army of the Thirteen Colonies when it was established in June 1775. People heavily associate the French Revolution with the American Revolution, due to the many general similarities. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. A disguised British vessel at Dunkirk had alerted the warships, and as soon as the Revenge was in the open sea she was chased by several British frigates, sloops of war, and cutters. For once Wentworth brought the King good news, the only kind he could ever believe. And Spanish concurrence in the alliance must be won. 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. France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. He was hardly prepared for the booming activity in Americas behalf that he found in Nantes. Arthur Lees secretary, Major John Thornton, was not only British but British secret service. 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. But he was too late. This period of conflict began in 1698 with the War of the Grand . They were the victims of their friends in Congress, who believed in promiscuous diplomacy as a device for distributing patronage. 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. 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. He had sent some of his baggage ahead to Florence, never dreaming that an Izard would not be received in the duchy. Nothing was a dead secret at Passy. 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. A growing fleet of American privateers had already brought prizes into the various French ports, and a system had been perfected for their disposal. 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. 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. Almost every transaction carried out for Congress was a mixture of public and private business, an accepted practice. 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. Within 50 years, the European empires in the Americas would shrink and new nations would spread across the whole of the Americas. Had France lost the race for American friendship? On the third day of May he seized the, Conyngham was still in the Dunkirk jail, the only safe place for him. The idling envoys to Vienna, Berlin, and Tuscany not only buzzed around Passy day after day but tried to rewrite Franklins treaties. As far as brains and ability went, Deane belonged in the first rank of the men doing the hard immediate tasks of the Revolution. The Americans' victory over the British may have been one of the greatest catalysts for the French Revolution. A riving home just after Lexington, Franklin had found the leaders in Congress still struggling against their enforced propulsion towards independence. However, Beaumarchais put his whole soul into his character as friend of the American Revolution. Moreover, a certain project which he may have discussed with Morris and Wickes was developing in his mind, and he needed to find out how France would react if prizes were brought into Nantes. Above all we needed an ally. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. The arms of which Doniol speaks had long since been amassed, and it seems probable that Dubourg and Vergennes discussed other matters. 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. This blogpost looks at the important French role in the American Revolution. Athur Lee, who became Congress agent in London after Franklins departure, had been in conspiratorial relations with Beaumarchais during his visits to England. As for the French islands, the Cape developed into a prime source for munitions, and Martinique became an American privateer base before Franklin sailed. The port records were similarly camouflaged. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. 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. However, Deane had already made a magnificent contribution to the Revolution in helping France to help America. 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. However, Izard and Arthur Lee let no day pass without earnest efforts, and on January 2, 1781, a move was made in Congress for Franklins recall. He left the rack ruined in fortune, health, and mind, and openly went over to the British. Podcast: Libert, Unit, Egalit. By a supple turn of the wrist, Franklin transformed Franco-American relations. There is a distinct anomaly in the fact that even with captures from British transports Congress scraped together for Washingtons use in 1775 only about forty tons of gunpowder. A number of ill-advised financial maneuvers in the late 1700s worsened the financial situation of the already cash-strapped French government. In France, however, this separation of function was impossible. This cat and mouse game was only part of the new turn in French policy. Franklin dealt with these suicidal moves in his usual oblique fashion. By the middle of July Vergennes had made up his mind to ask the King for armed intervention. Bancroft is entirely an American and every word he used on the late occasion was to deceive; perhaps they think Mr. Wentworth has been sent from motives of fear and if that is Franklins opinion the whole conduct he has shewn, is wise and to me it [unravels] what other ways would appear inexplicable.. Williams, now 27, had been trained in the Caribbean trade; he spoke French and was capable of dealing with accounts, which always baffled his granduncle. 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. Moreover, he knew that Franklin was talking sense; if Washington was losing battles there were reasons for his setback which France could do a great deal to remedy. As the American who best understood both sides of the Atlantic, Franklin had carried much of that burden, and for a long time to come would carry all the responsibility for getting maximum aid from the neutral powers without compromising the future of the new republic. Affairs at Nantes became more and more tangled, and William Lee did nothing to straighten them out. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. Temple Franklin was only seventeen, but he was working out well as his grandfathers personal secretary, patiently making several copies of important papers to be sent on different ships bound for home in the hope that at least one copy would arrive safely. 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. But the accident was symbolic: Hortalez & Company had suffered a. They were based on the Plan of 1776, drafted chiefly by Franklin, and they laid down his cherished, and essentially modern, principles of free trade and settled the wholly new problem of how a republic should conduct its relations with a kingdom. 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. 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. 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. The colonies needed these things . By a supple turn of the wrist, Franklin transformed Franco-American relations. It is significant that while the Americans and French trusted Bancroft implicitly, the British were always suspicious of him, had his letters opened at the post office, and watched his movements. The power which first recognizes the independence of the Americans, he said, will be the one to gather all the fruits of this war.. At the first hint of this the Doctor tendered his resignation, which to his relief was not accepted. This move had been made after Franklin left Philadelphia, and the bad news would not reach Paris for months. Franklin looked upon these fleets with the lust of a patriot whose country was in mortal danger for lack of their support. French Revolutionary wars, title given to the hostilities between France and one or more European powers between 1792 and 1799. The British had many other secret agents in France, and other avenues of information. The story goes that he was rushing to play the stock market, and no doubt he was. Some inner mechanism in the Lee genes transmuted whatever was wrong with the Lees into something much worse that was wrong with their enemies. She anchored in Quiberon Bay with her prizes, and Franklin made a bone-racking journey overland by post chaise. In November Congress resolved to recall Deane for questioning, and sent John Adams to take his place in the mission. Franklin enjoyed the brief engagements. 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. 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. Wentworth recruited Bancroft into the service and supervised his work in Paris closely, never quite sure of his loyalty to England. 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. 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. 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. It made the French . However, over time divisions of opinion became apparent between federalists and anti-federalists. He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. They sent eight of them to France and got back safely. The Declaration of Independence served as a model for the French Revolution. A generation after the end of the Revolutionary War, new revolutions emerged in nearly a dozen Spanish colonies in Central and South America. George Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army in 1775. Bancroft was still the mission confidant at Passy; certain Americans who sat at Deanes dinner table reported on ship movements to the British secret service, and Captain Joseph Hynson, who happened to be Lambert Wickess stepbrother, stole an entire pouch of dispatches intended for Congress, which contained all the secret correspondence between the mission and the French ministry for the last eight months. Even though some consider King Louis to just be a contributor he . This wealthy and devoted young Marylander had been educated in England and was qualified for diplomatic assignments. Silas Deane was invaluable. The Comte de Vergennes. But he was quite happy to spend the year of 1777 in the humbler role of itinerant trouble shooter in the French ports. His, Privateers could accomplish wonders, but they could not fight the great British ships of the line. By 1763, France had suffered a crushing defeat in the Seven Years' War (more commonly called the "French and Indian War" in the U.S.), losing all its claims to mainland Canada and the Louisiana Territory. Plainly neither side wanted to start hostilities, and they had perfected a system for avoiding a rupture. Captain Pearson of the Speedwell had orders to follow any suspected American ship out to the open sea and there arrest her. 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. DuVal, Kathleen. The Nantucket half of Franklin was always strong, and he longed to see how the captain and ship behaved in an engagement. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787. The two Lees and Izard were busily writing letters about the expected alliance. In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. The French Revolution was influenced by the experiences and systems of other nations. Lee could not bear to lose Beaumarchais and tried to detach him from Deane. But somehow, even when he acted in a cheap way, Silas Deane was not cheap. 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. Islanders and continentals had worked out a prototype of the free trade which was one of Franklins major objectives. However, he had proved to himself more than once that prodigies could result from careful planning and unstinted effort. He waited until the, Beaumarchais was with the three commissioners when the official messenger arrived. Conclusion. The Treaty of Alliance (1778) between the United State and France was signed February 6, 1778. 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. Congress demanded impossibilities of him: a huge loan which France could not afford, French battleships and seamen, and the prompt entrance of the Bourbons into the war. 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. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. Grard, calling at Passy that evening, gave the commissioners a full report of the Cabinet meeting. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. The Sugar Act, was made to try and stop the smuggling of sugar and molasses. He burned some and sent others to America, the West Indies, or whatever theater of war seemed to need their cargoes most. Now he felt the reinforcement of those thousands of his countrymen who had won the campaign in the North. This was amazing enough; France had broken through the limits of her ostensible neutrality and was allowing Martinique to become a base of war against Britain. Native American groups had to choose the loyalist or patriot causeor somehow maintain a neutral stance during the Revolutionary War. French ships engaged British vessels almost immediately after Britain declared war on France in March of 1778. For diplomatic reasons, he always pretended a vast ignorance of Hortalez & Companya feat like hiding an elephant in a hat. For months, in fact, Franklin and Deane had slipped away in the evening for conferences with the minister, and Lee spread the word that the Doctor was having an affair with some French beauty. France's Debt Problems. The merchant was the intendant for supplying clothing for the French Armyand of late the American Army, for he had given Beaumarchais a million livres worth of clothing on credit. In the interval, quite unsuspected by his compatriots, he did high-level work for Eden. What event launched the beginning of witchcraft accusations in Salem. When he arrived at Nantes Penet kept him drunk and hostile to the Paris commissioners. 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. And Franklin, Voltaire, and Rousseau were linked together as the presiding geniuses of the century. The Hortalez ships, scattered as they were at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Le Havre, and Dunkirk, were still too conspicuous to be missed by the busy British spies. Soon Franklin and Deane had a group of young men busy in the various ports, helping merchantmen and privateers speed on their way, informing them of shifts in French regulations and dangerous areas patrolled by British warships, recruiting French seamen to fill out depleted ships companies, finding masters for ships and ships for masters. Dr. Bancroft was an old friend of Franklins from his London days. Between 1778 and 1782 the French provided supplies, arms and ammunition, uniforms, and, most importantly, troops and naval support to the beleaguered Continental Army. 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. Later Congress backed up this pledge and authorized all tenders necessary to get Bourbon help. It began with the bold request that France sell the United States eight ships of the line, completely manned . His contacts with his British employers revealed a quite different side, deformed by cupidity and fear. What major problem did the Continental army face in the winter of 1777? The Declaration was passed with independence a hope on the far side of a hopeless-seeming war. The court of France, he wrote, is the great wheel that moves them all and he added that of all posts he preferred Paris for himself. Between 1775 and 1825, revolutions across the Americas and Europe changed the maps and governments of the Atlantic world. The celebrated dramatist Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais now cast himself in his own best role, which he played without applause. France and the American Revolution. This was the germ of the deliberate policy Franklin and Deane pursued during 1777: to create such an open scandal about French connivance in American raids that it could not be effervesced in private conversations between Stormont and Vergennes.

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