William Carmichael was rich already. The young Marylander’s family wealth enabled him to join the staff of the commissioners in Paris as an unpaid volunteer. A self-described dilettante “covetous only of reputation, and now and then a pretty woman,” he took a position as Deane’s secretary to be “near the sun” of great events unfolding in Europe. Carmichael was a minor figure historically. Yet along with many others of similar background he occasionally wielded no little influence thanks to the presumption of authority that often attached to socially connected, wellborn gentlemen despite their lack of demonstrated merit.
France in 1777 was full of such Americans. Chronicles of the period blur with the names of businessmen, maritime agents, Continental representatives authorized or self-designated, and assorted relatives, wanderers, and hangers-on, most of whom were split into bitter factions over money, access to French officials, and the comparative purity of one another’s allegiance to the patriot cause.
Some fifty or sixty gravitated to the port of Nantes on the Loire River where many mercantile houses with ties to the colonies were based. The preeminent American there was Tom Morris, younger brother to Robert, the member of Congress said to chair “all the committees that can properly be employed in receiving and importing supplies.” Tom had represented Robert’s firm, Willing & Morris, since the start of the war. His nepotistic promotion to the post of Congress’s top commercial agent in France, which should have cemented his high stature, coincided with the terminal phase of his alcoholic tailspin.
When Tom left Nantes on a binge in the summer of 1777, his brother sent John Ross, a Scotsman, to rescue the company books from chaos. Described as “puritan” in his ethics, Ross clashed with another upstanding accountant, Franklin’s nephew Jonathan Williams. Williams’s assignment from his uncle to cull any Continental receipts from among the cargoes and prizes Tom Morris had over-seen inevitably put him at odds with Ross, who was there in the interest of Willing & Morris. They were driven into an uneasy détente, however, by charges of graft leveled at them and at many others by Arthur and William Lee of the powerful Virginia clan of soldiers, statesmen, and planters.
William Lee had relocated from London to Paris after his brother became Congress’s third diplomatic commissioner. That each today is labeled “troublemaker” in the scrupulously benign Encyclopedia of the American Revolution constitutes some consolation to anyone who hopes villains will be called to account in the historical record if not in their lifetimes. The fact that they aimed to murder reputations rather than lives hardly mitigates nastiness committed in an era, and among a social set, in which the two were more or less equivalent.
The Lees’ relentless slander of their fellow expatriates furthered a lust for prestige more than profit. Arthur, angling to be Congress’s sole delegate to France, wanted his brother posted to the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, Franklin sent to “respectable and quiet” Vienna, and Deane removed to Holland. He was jealous of the stature accorded Franklin by France’s government and the affection he enjoyed from its people, a feeling aggravated by the distaste and rebuff Arthur engendered on various congressional errands around Europe. But his loathing for Deane was personal.
Having conceived with Beaumarchais the original idea of a dummy firm to funnel arms to America, he believed Deane had usurped what should have been his role in Hortalez & Company. Deflected by Franklin from participating in diplomatic talks, he was similarly kept in the dark about Deane’s efforts to obtain arms and outfit privateers on behalf of Congress. Certain that Deane was making a secret fortune, Lee decried his “faithless principles, dirty intrigue, selfish views, and wicked arts” in countless letters to influential contacts in America, including his congressman brother, Richard Henry Lee, and Richard’s friends, John and Samuel Adams—“the L’s and the A’s,” Arthur termed them.
Ultimately he hoped to implicate every American in France “through whose hands the public money has passed,” he wrote Richard. “If this scheme can be executed, it will disconcert all the plans at one stroke, without an appearance of intention, and save both the public and me.”
William Lee chimed in, promising “proofs to come” to verify the brothers’ sketchy but ominous charges. To their voices was added that of Ralph Izard, another scion of southern wealth hanging around Paris in hope of advancement. “The three men gave themselves great airs,” writes Helen Augur in The Secret War of Independence, “and misdirected attention from the fact that they were doing nothing but adding to the witch brew.”
The trio did little damage to those able to defend themselves. Williams and Ross kept impeccable records of their work in Nantes and so were never seriously jeopardized. Franklin, repeatedly accused by the Lees of embezzling funds, was untouchable by virtue of his years, experience, and established record. “I have been a servant to many publics through a long life,” he wrote in answer to one “malignant” attack. “There is not a single instance of my ever being accused before of acting contrary to their interest or my duty.”
Izard, less than half Franklin’s age and with no accomplishments to speak of, didn’t hesitate to call the old doctor “haughty, and not guided by principles of virtue or honor.” When no evidence could be found of Franklin’s supposed perfidy, Izard took that as proof in itself. “His tricks are in general carried on with so much cunning that it is extremely difficult to fix them on him.”
Contemptuous barely captures Franklin’s opinion of Izard: “little, hissing, crooked, serpentine, venomous.” Still, the mudslinging hindered but didn’t derail his discussions with the French foreign ministry about formalizing a Franco-American alliance. The atmosphere at Franklin’s residence in the Hotel de Valentinois in the exclusive Passy section of Paris continued to reflect his manner of relaxed improvisation, which, as a negotiating style, was all the more effective for being true to his nature, earnest and elusive at once.
For example, William Bingham recently had accepted Martinique’s demand of a 1 percent fee on all services to American privateers; he persuaded a dubious Congress that receipts verifying French payoffs, if made public, would “quicken the resentments of the English.” Thinking along similarly devious lines, Franklin dismissed the conventional wisdom that French ships leased to British merchants seeking immunity from privateer attack undermined the American cause. He predicted that shipowners would, “with a little encouragement, facilitate the necessary discovery” of British cargoes despite the supposed protection of sailing under a French flag. That encouragement, namely bribery, could then be leaked to the British with predictable outcries of French treachery.
When Franklin (with what his adversaries called “insidious subtlety”) encouraged American privateers, increasingly prevalent in European waters, to bring their prizes to French ports rather than sail them back to America for settlement, he pushed the boundary of diplomatic decorum to the point of impertinence. France could turn a blind eye only to a degree; in the face of blatant indiscretion, a sharp scolding was due its American guests if only to mollify British outrage. Franklin crafted slick apologies for the infractions that were mindful of French dignity while still pushing sly proposals to transfer captured cargoes onto French ships at sea or to conduct prize sales just outside the harbor in technically international waters. He rarely gave ground completely, in other words, leaving each issue slightly nudged toward maintaining friction between France and Britain.
He could play the game harder if need be. His effusive expressions of remorse to the foreign ministry “when any vessels of war appertaining to America, either through ignorance or inattention, do anything that might offend,” often carried reminders, lest France forget the commercial windfall which an alliance might bring and which Anglo-American reconciliation would certainly snuff, that its “protection to us and our nation will always be remembered with gratitude and affection.”
Yet even as he outwardly backtracked from encouraging privateers, he supported Deane’s continuing call for Congress to send more
blank commissions to Europe. “This mode of exerting our force should be pushed with vigor.”
Franklin and Deane conferred almost daily. “The latter appears to be the more active and efficient man,” a British intelligence report said, “but less circumspect and secret, his discretion not being always proof against the natural warmth of his temper, and being weakened also by his own ideas of the importance of his present employment.”
In running the mission’s maritime operations under Franklin’s far-thinking but often chaotic leadership, Deane puffed up his role because he thought its significance underappreciated. “I repeatedly gave my sentiments in favor of sending cruisers into these seas,” he told anyone who’d listen. “They have been of infinite prejudice to our enemies, both in their commerce and reputation.”
Franklin praised his colleague’s contributions. “He daily proves himself an able, faithful, active, and extremely useful servant of the public.” When the Lees questioned why most of the mission’s commercial documents bore Deane’s signature alone, Franklin explained that Deane “consulted with me and had my approbation in the orders he gave, and I know they were for the best and aimed at the public good.” But he knew this about Deane as well: “I perceive he has enemies.”
Having enemies was no rarity in those times. But Deane was vulnerable because his store of well-wishers was thinner than he realized. When the Lees’ charges against him first circulated in Congress, they’d been countered by the strong advocacy of Robert Morris. But when Robert learned that fall of Deane’s efforts to remove his brother Tom as the top American agent at Nantes, he renounced their friendship—and Deane didn’t find out for months.
Communication lapses between Paris and Philadelphia also kept Deane from realizing the extent to which his commissioning of French fortune hunters as Continental officers had angered people like George Washington and Nathanael Greene. Greene almost resigned over the elevation of a French artilleryman, Philippe du Coudray, over General Henry Knox. Du Coudray’s drowning near Philadelphia in September 1777 resolved the matter, though not before it opened a permanent rift between Greene and John Adams, who condemned the general’s refusal to bend to Congress’s civilian will.
Franklin too was besieged with applications from French aristocrats and thus came to sympathize with Deane’s difficult position during his early months abroad. But there was little chance that colleagues in America could appreciate the isolation and stress that had led Deane, without funds or commodities to pay for supplies obtained on credit, to accept French officers in order to placate their wealthy families.
It didn’t help Deane’s reputation that his two steadiest companions in Paris were Beaumarchais and Franklin’s American-born secretary, Edward Bancroft. Beaumarchais was essentially viewed as a French Silas Deane, a clever insider who couched his avarice in idealism; while Bancroft’s frequent travel between France and Britain, the nation of his citizenship now, hinted at the apolitical opportunism underlying his shady business deals and his employment as a British spy.
But most exploitable by Deane’s enemies was his work with privateers, whose notorious success in New England and the West Indies brought instant connotations of lawlessness. Franklin, through his tireless efforts to free American mariners from British custody, would be revered by sailors as “the patron saint of prisoners.” Deane earned a less beatific title as the one “who watched over the sea captains.” He enjoyed the work for its saltwater, daredevil milieu. His critics among the L’s and the A’s suspected that he enjoyed its plunder as well.
For years, France and Spain had shared the view that “England is the monster against which we should always be prepared.” Vergennes, the French foreign minister, wasn’t yet ready to get “actively offensive,” however. He had twenty warships in the West Indies and another thirty-two in France prepared to support America “whenever it can be done with advantage.” But he wanted further proof from the battlefield that the Continental Army stood a chance against British ground forces.
Comte de Vergennes, the wily French foreign minister, leaped at the opportunity to undermine Britain by offering secret military aide to Congress and granting safe harbor to American privateers. Confident that the American rebellion could be exploited to France’s advantage, he didn’t imagine that his gamesmanship might someday contribute to the fall of his government.
Spain’s longstanding dispute with Portugal, a British ally, over territories in South America had led its king, Charles III, initially to back Vergennes’s clandestine maneuvers against Britain with a hefty loan to Hortalez & Company. But those disputes had been resolved in Spain’s favor by mid-1777, cooling the king’s enthusiasm. He’d also begun wondering, with good reason it turned out, if a free and empowered United States might someday be a threat to Spanish possessions in the New World.
This wavering gave Vergennes pause, for he knew his monarch, the ever cautious Louis XVI, was loath to go to war without Spain at his side. As one historian later wrote, such considerations were “in strict accord with classic diplomacy, which indulged in no philanthropy and was much addicted to lying.”
The need for American fighters to make a good show was therefore more important than ever. British spy reports gauged the situation bluntly. “The great object of Messrs. Franklin and Deane is to obtain some open declaration in favor of America. This must soon happen; instantly indeed if Mr. Washington should gain any decisive battle against Sir William Howe.”
But good news was scarce. British troops still held Newport and in April 1777 had rampaged through western Connecticut. Having prevailed in numerous small skirmishes from Vermont to Georgia, they retook Fort Ticonderoga and its precious store of military supplies in early July. The action called attention to General John Burgoyne’s advance from Canada into New York with 8,000 men, alarming Congress with the prospect of Burgoyne linking up with Howe’s army in the lower Hudson valley and effectively cutting the colonies in two.
Deane painted a desperate picture to French officials. “The United States will be distressed to the last degree, if not absolutely ruined, in the next campaign unless relieved from some quarter or other.” But Franklin stayed optimistic, assuring Congress that war among the European powers was, if not imminent, inevitable. “When all are ready, a small matter may suddenly bring it on.”
Almost a year earlier, Deane had successfully lobbied, with French help and over British protests, for the release of Captain John Lee from a Spanish jail. Freeing the Newburyport privateer had established that, despite their outward amity, Spain and France didn’t share Britain’s belief that American commerce raiders were criminals. Neutrality agreements still forbade the material support of one another’s foes, but the public affirmation of Spanish and French disregard of British grievances marked a big step toward open hostility.
Rebel activity in European waters had increased after the Lee decision. Occurring just across the English Channel, the provocations were even more maddening to Britons than those in the West Indies. The main sore point was that under terms of their treaties, nations could receive any vessel in “distress caused by weather or want of provisions.” This loophole enabled visitors to feign hardship or disrepair in order legally to enter neutral ports to refit and meanwhile do business. When France and Spain invoked the clause to justify the American presence in their ports, Britain scoffed at the claims yet was helpless to disprove them.
The majority of American vessels in Europe were private transports engaged in the same commodities-for-arms trade that Congress was pursuing. The privateers among them were independent operators that had ventured across the Atlantic in search of prey. Tyrannicide and Massachusetts, after the shabby episode in which they’d abandoned the Continental brig Cabot to HMS Milford off New England earlier in 1777, proceeded to take twenty-five prizes off the British coast that spring. General Mifflin, which on the excuse of illness afflicting its crew had deserted John Manley’s navy-privateer fleet six days after leaving Boston, subsequently p
rowled the Irish Sea and sold prizes at the French port of Morlaix.
Rising States and Freedom from Massachusetts and Montgomery from Maryland also carried prizes to France. Reminding their skippers of the restrictive “treaties and ordinances,” Franklin recommended “some convenient place on the coast where the business may be transacted without much observation and conducted with discretion. I suppose this may be done because I understand it has been practiced in many cases.” More commonly, privateers provisioned in French and Spanish ports but didn’t linger and rarely sold prizes there, dispatching them instead to America.
The first warship that sought entirely to base its operations in Europe was the sixteen-gun Continental brig Reprisal. Under its captain, Lambert Wickes, Reprisal had delivered Bingham to Martinique in mid-1776 and Franklin to France in December. Wickes had seized prizes on each trip, giving his eminent passengers a persuasive look at commerce raiding in action.
He’d sold his prizes openly in Martinique, but at Nantes had hastily unloaded them at half value to avoid attracting the notice of British observers. They got wind of it anyway, and within weeks London newspapers were calling it more evidence of French duplicity. “Is this not acknowledging the American privateer’s commission? And is not that an acknowledgment of the independency of America?”
Winter weather froze Reprisal in port through January 1777. During the hiatus Wickes joined Deane’s circle in Paris. Centered at Deane’s hotel, the high-living group included Carmichael, Bancroft, Beaumarchais, Franklin’s teenage grandson William Temple Franklin, and any number of “privateer masters who needed rest and relaxation” courtesy of their gregarious host. One visiting skipper wrote of the scene, “Carmichael and myself are constantly driving about in Deane’s coach, and have missed but one night of opera, comedy, or masquerade since I came to town.”
Patriot Pirates Page 18
