The only source for salt during the war was the Turks Islands beds at the tail of the Bahama chain, long a Bermudian monopoly. On July 14 a mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris looking for arms to protect itself from the king's forces. The French, who had close touch with the Americans, were victorious in incorporating Enlightenment principles into a new governmental system. Nothing came of these appeals, and meanwhile Franklin and Deane had been working at a highly secret project which might prove more effective in precipitating a Franco-British war. The American Revolution - US History Scene 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. The next day the Crown Council decided to conclude the alliance, and Vergennes rushed word to Passy that France would carry out her secret agreement of December 17 and fight at Americas side until her independence was won. It meant only the familiar rite of changing the property on paper. Franklin had no doubt guessed, when the courier returned from Europe in September with news of tremendous shipments of arms by Monsieur Hortalez, that the real name of this mysterious friend was France. The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. One of Conynghams prizes was recaptured by the British, who took her into Yarmouth. A French expeditionary force arrived in the United States in 1780. Then he captured the Kings packet Swallow , running between Falmouth and Lisbon. From May, 1777, to May, 1778, Congress would receive no direct word from its mission in Paris. 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. The Franco-American Revolution - Part 2 | 4 Corners of the World 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. 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. 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. He was also making them a gift of 375,000 livres. Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. 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. After the scheme had been put into effect they explained the mechanism to their committee: For though the fitting out [of an American vessel in a French port] may be covered and concealed by various pretenses, so at least to be winked at by the Government here yet the bringing in of prizes by a vessel so fitted out is so notorious an act, and so contrary to treaties, that if suffered must cause an immediate war.. The prize crew of five Americans and sixteen Frenchmen were put in prison, and the prize master was forced to confess that Conyngham had made other captures. 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. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. While a gifted and expert secret agent can develop a second personality which keeps him from making slips, in Bancrofts case this doubling of self may have reflected a profound split in the psyche. As the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution, it is easy to determine that the two must have similarities. But he had met Deane, and wrote him asking for a rendezvous, hinting that he had come to promote peace. It looked like a checkmate. Then, when the diplomatic pressure eased, he would stealthily release them one at a time. By this process of elastic diplomacy the amenities were preserved while both sides gained time for war preparations and spared their exchequers the drain of active hostilities. General Washington in the American Revolution. In terms of violent behavior, the American Revolution can't hold a candle to the French Revolution. Spain had suffered less, but she was tied to France by the Bourbon Family Compact. For the first time since Britain was a maritime power, Deane wrote Morris, the River Thames and others of its ports were crowded with French and other ships taking in freight, in order to avoid the risk of having property captured.. Franco-American Alliance | French-United States history [1778] She threaded the colonies and Britain with her spies; Versailles knew much better than Whitehall how the Revolution was shaping. Franklin was now seventy, afflicted with gout, and wretchedly tired from his labors in Congress and its candle-burning committees. For one thing, he worshiped Franklin and wanted to be useful to him; for another, he enjoyed hobnobbing with the rough sea captains he was assigned to help. During Franklins years in London he had watched the old power pattern repeat itself. First, they provided the colonists with many of the supplies they needed and with a great deal of money. French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, 1754-1763 Vergennes too recognized the subtle strategy behind the cruises, and he was coming to the decision that war could not be postponed much longer. He had a large family and expensive tastes, and needed and loved money. 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. But Beaumarchais was on a crusade for American independence, and he would not drop it until independence was won. The French Revolution lasted from 1789 until 1799. France's prolonged involvement in the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763 drained the treasury, as did the country's participation in the American Revolution of 1775-1783. This wealthy and devoted young Marylander had been educated in England and was qualified for diplomatic assignments. 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. 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. Compared to the antics of the French Revolution, the infamous Tea Party in Boston was like the sisters at the convent sneaking into the dorm of the rival convent and shorting their sheets. The French loan was a godsend. 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. She anchored in Quiberon Bay with her prizes, and Franklin made a bone-racking journey overland by post chaise. 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. Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. So too was our want of guns, supplies, and everything needed in a war against one of the major powers of the earth. If General Howe had guessed that, he could have ended the war then and there. Even Vergennes was now lukewarm. This cat and mouse game was only part of the new turn in French policy. Young Gustavus Conyngham of the landed Irish gentry had emigrated as a boy to Philadelphia where his relatives were prominent shipping merchants. King Louis XVI was born in 1754 and was pronounced king of France when he succeeded his grandfather in 1774. He wrote Lord North that the agent has shewn great zeal and dispatch in the business he had so handsomely undertaken and ably accomplished.. 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. 1. 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. A few days later Louis XVI made the United States a loan of 2,000,000 livres. 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. At the moment, Nantes was all, The American was adulated, wined and dined. Edward Bancroft had been in British pay since 1772. 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. Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949, Benjamin Franklin And The French Alliance, Franklin was now seventy, afflicted with gout, and wretchedly tired from his labors in Congress and its candle-burning committees. 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. 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 inspired the French to launch their own revolution for liberty and equality. 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. The Channel Islands privateers were out in force, and the maritime war in Europe, which could no longer be closely directed from Passy, was in a state of anarchy. 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. 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. B.) 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 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. Spain and the American Revolution On the surface Deanes rapid rise might seem the result of clever opportunism in marrying and winning the friendship of the right people. His, Soon Beaumarchaiss coach was tearing down the road to Paris so fast that it overturned and he injured an arm. 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. Continental Congress established the Secret Committee of Correspondence to publicize the American cause in Europe. Most of them were of no earthly use to the Commander in Chief and drained an impoverished Congress of money and patience. 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. Franklin looked upon these fleets with the lust of a patriot whose country was in mortal danger for lack of their support. However, Deane had already made a magnificent contribution to the Revolution in helping France to help America. He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. During the summer Congress became alarmed at the massing of French warships in the Caribbean and sent young William Bingham to find out whether this mobilization portended action against the United States. 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. He only succeeded in quarreling with them both, and when he tried to see Vergennes, he was quite properly snubbed. 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. 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. No charge was made against Deane, but for two years Congress kept him in Philadelphia at its pleasure while the press vilified him. 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 gain time, he placated Stormont by arresting the three Wickes vessels (which kept them safe from the British warships on patrol) and by promising that the new cutter being fitted for Conyngham would be sold. After Lees visit he proffered no more aid and listened to Floridablanca. French Alliance, French Assistance, and European diplomacy during the Johnson was captured and sent to the Old Mill, from which he soon escaped. 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. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a nightmare figure. How did the success of the American Revolution contribute to the French 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. A certain Monsieur Hortalez, said the courier, was sending munitions worth 200,000 to the Cape, Martinique, and Statia, which American captains could obtain for Congress simply by saying Hortalez to the port commandant. The commissioners had written privately to Robert Morris that his brother must be removed, but their letters were not received for months. 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. George Washington - Revolutionary leadership | Britannica The story goes that he was rushing to play the stock market, and no doubt he was. 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. French Revolution | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . 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. Richardson (Bancrofts tiny, curiously contorted script was almost feminine). It could not supply Washington gunpowder in 1775 nor cope with the enlarging task of war procurement. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. France's support deepened after the Americans beat the British in the October 1777 Battle of Saratoga, proving themselves committed to independence and worthy of a formal alliance. First these navies quarreled head-on, in the English Channel and then in the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean, in a war of escorts. He was never suspected by anybody but Arthur Lee, who suspected everybody but his own secretaries, who were almost invariably British agents. 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. only affected North America. Deanes griefs were personal. 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. The involvement of France in the American War of Independence (1775-1783) was not only significant in the progress of the war itself but also as a critical moment for France. The power which first recognizes the independence of the Americans, he said, will be the one to gather all the fruits of this war.. The American and French Revolutions: Comparison and Contrast Within 50 years, the European empires in the Americas would shrink and new nations would spread across the whole of the Americas. 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. READ: The Atlantic Revolutions (article) | Khan Academy With a fur cap on his unwigged gray head, Franklin took up his studies of the Gulf Stream where he had dropped them on his voyage home from England. By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. 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).