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“France has done too much, unless she intends to do more.” —Benjamin Franklin
The American commissioners had succeeded in the preliminaries, obtaining some war matériel from France, but not in the main event of garnering direct and substantial military support. In the spring of 1777, new instructions from Philadelphia enabled the commissioners to offer, in exchange for such military support, half of Newfoundland and a share of the fisheries. Thinking it a generous offer, the commissioners were startled to have it rebuffed.
Their dismay revealed that they had not believed Vergennes’s repeated protestations that France was not looking for conquest. That spring Vergennes emphasized the message to Louis XVI, noting, “The glory of conquering kings is the scourge of humanity; that of beneficent kings, its benediction.” The line was a restatement of a maxim in Fénélon’s Telemachus, and specifically chosen to resonate with Louis, who had written an introduction to that book. Maurepas was not the only master manipulator of the king.
In Franklin’s next note to Vergennes he took another tack, warning that since Great Britain was pouring resources into the 1777 campaign against America, should France not act now it might
irrevocably loose the most favourable opportunity ever afforded to any Nation of Humbling a Powerfull, arrogant + Hereditary Enemy.… The King + Ministry of Britain already know that France has encouraged and assisted the Colonys in their Present resistance; and they are already as much incensed against her, as they would be, were she openly to declare war. In truth, France has done too much, unless she intends to do more.
When this rationale, too, failed to move Versailles more in the Americans’ direction, the commissioners next looked for alternative European partners.
Arthur Lee traveled to Spain, on his own initiative and without first being invited by the court. His presumption was not rewarded; no Spaniard in a high position would see him, and his attempts to secure assistance for America reaped only a small loan and modest amounts of free munitions, blankets, and clothing, to be deposited at Havana and New Orleans. In Amsterdam, Deane, while enjoying a better reception than Lee had in Spain, found the Dutch resistant to furnishing direct loans. In Vienna and Berlin, to which Lee next traveled, he was rebuffed and had his important papers stolen by the British. When Lee asked Frederick the Great to expel the British emissary who confessed to the pilferage, the Prussian monarch demurred.
The next American proffer in hopes of an alliance, made by Franklin on April 7, was to the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Aranda: If Spain would join America in the Revolution, the United States would declare war on Portugal, “and continue said war for the total Conquest of that Kingdom,” and also fight alongside France and Spain to recapture their former possessions in the Caribbean. This astonishing offer, too, was rejected—it was made at precisely the wrong moment, just after Portugal’s king had died and his daughter was using her ascension to the throne as opportunity to end Portugal’s war with Spain over South America.
Refusals by Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, and Lisbon caused Franklin to write home, in May 1777: “Feeling ourselves assisted [by France] in other Respects cordially and essentially, we are the more readily induced to let them take their own Time, and to avoid making ourselves troublesome.”
But the commissioners were determined to trouble Great Britain, and had at hand the means to do so—blank commissions for privateers sent by Congress, a ship they had bought for privateering, renamed the Surprise, and an able captain, the Irish-born Gustavus Conyngham. On a previous commercial run, after being captured by the British, Conyngham, thirty-three, had retaken his ship and sailed it into Amsterdam. Soon after leaving port in the Surprise on May 1, 1777, he captured a British mail packet, demanding and receiving its “surrender to the Congress of America.” Spotting the official seal on the mailbags, Conyngham returned to Dunkerque and dispatched them to Franklin in Paris. The British were apoplectic. At Vergennes’s request, the American commissioners returned the mailbags and did not raise too much of a fuss when the French seized Conyngham’s prizes and put him in jail. According to the London Public Advertiser, Conyngham had done considerable damage, and not just to property: “The Capture [of the mail packet] is a complete Refutation of what we have been told so often concerning the reduced state of the Americans.… [The First Lord of the Admiralty] may blush for once at having suffered such an Insult so near our very Doors, after such repeated but Impudent Boasts.”
While Conyngham was out of circulation, the commissioners dispatched Wickes with the Revenge and two other ships. Flying a false flag—the Union Jack—he soon captured and scuttled a British brig, and then in the Irish Sea took eighteen merchantmen, sinking seven of them. “It is extremely mortifying to proud Britain that all her boasted Naval Power cannot prevent her being insulted on her own Coasts,” Franklin gloated. The London Chronicle reported that residents of the Jersey and Guernsey coasts were fearful about Americans cruising in plain sight, and the St. James Chronicle wrote that even British shipping lanes from Plymouth to London were no longer safe. Some British ships of the line, scheduled to be sent to the European Atlantic or American coasts, were reassigned to the Irish Sea.
Supposedly to assist Vergennes in assuaging British ambassador Stormont, the commissioners ordered Conyngham to return to America. But once away from shore he yielded to the importuning of officers and crew to again raid the British coasts. In July and August he took prizes, forced ship owners to pay ransom, and in other ways made a shambles of British protection of shipping until, his ship battered and chased, he took refuge in a Spanish port. Chaumont, Franklin’s host at Passy, handled the disposal of these and many other prizes brought by American privateers into French, Dutch, and Spanish ports, while successfully obscuring insurgent hands in the transactions.
In the Caribbean, the Martinique-based William Bingham made similar efforts to harm Great Britain and added another twist, using what he described to Congress as the “Self Love” of the “trading people of France.” American privateers took British merchantmen in Caribbean waters—easy pickings—and brought their prizes into French-controlled ports to be sold, a sequence of events that in Bingham’s view provoked the French and British “to mutual Depredations on each other, by Sowing the Seeds of Jealousy and Discord betwixt them, & by affording them matter for present Resentment, & renewing in their Minds the objects of their antient Animosity.”
As a result of American raiders taking hundreds of British merchantmen in 1776–77, four British West Indies trading companies went bankrupt. Also, insurance rates for vessels traveling to and from the Caribbean or India soared by 15 percent for escorted-convoy vessels and 30 percent for those not in convoys. Rates rose even for ships that never left British waters.
Bingham reported one inadvertent tricking of the British. Among his tasks was to oversee the transfer of supplies from Beaumarchais-Deane ships to smaller ones headed for the United States. After removing the Seine’s munitions for reshipment, he reembarked it as a French-owned vessel, ostensibly bound for the Newfoundland fisheries but with secret orders to dock in Boston. The British stopped it, found those secret orders, and condemned both ship and cargo. France protested that the ship was theirs, the British accused the French of duplicity, and an international incident resulted. Bingham reported:
That part of [the Seine’s] cargo which was taken out was consequently saved to the United States, & the capture of the remainder was so happily disposed to occasion a subject of reciprocal complaint & altercation between the [British and French] courts, that everyone believed I had fixed the matter accordingly, & gave me credit for my plan, as a deep scheme of Machiavellian policy.
The shipping losses so incensed the British that Stormont informed Vergennes that Great Britain would shortly issue an ultimatum to France to stop providing help to American privateers or risk open war. That spurred Vergennes, on July 23, to ask Louis XVI “either to abandon America to herself or to help her effectively a
nd courageously” by an outright alliance. The rest of Europe would not likely take sides against France if it did so, Vergennes asserted. France’s queen was an Austrian princess, so Austria would not retaliate; Prussia disliked Great Britain; and Sweden knew that its internal problems would only be worsened by a foreign war. The most likely disturbers of Eurasian stability, Russia and Turkey, had just signed a peace accord, calming fears of a Balkan war that could tie down French forces and prevent their use in a war against Great Britain.
Maurepas opposed what he deemed Vergennes’s rush toward war. His prime ministerial ally was Jacques Necker, a banker who had finally been permitted to fully replace Turgot as finance minister. A Swiss and a Protestant, Necker had refused to become a French citizen or a Catholic, so in the council he could not vote, but his opinions bore weight with the new minister of war, the Prince de Montbarrey. Vergennes’s chief backer in the council continued to be Sartine, and he had important extramural allies, the most potent being public opinion, for the king wanted very much to be in tune with public opinion. Louis was also influenced toward a closer embrace of America by the professional military’s desire for a war in which to advance their careers, and by businessmen who saw America’s vast commercial potential. But he yielded once more to caution, and again pinned his decision on Spain. Carlos III’s new, hardnosed first minister, José Moñino, Conde de Floridablanca, fifty-nine, categorically refused Spanish participation in the war.
Louis did authorize a few French actions to prepare his country should war with Britain break out anyway, and to prevent undue French zeal from provoking such a war: He recalled the Newfoundland fishing fleet, halted naval patrols in the Bay of Biscay, and banned Conyngham, Wickes, and other raiders from French ports. Vergennes wrote to the council that for France to pass an edict compelling the surrender of American prizes “will have the effect of declaring [the American ship commanders] and their countrymen to be pirates and sea-robbers,” but the council passed it anyway. He grumbled to Noailles in London that banishing the American privateers was “carrying consideration [for Great Britain’s wishes] as far as it is possible to do, and if our proceedings do not give satisfaction, we must forever give up trying to satisfy a nation so hard to please.” But Great Britain prevailed for the moment, as American naval activity from French bases ceased. Conyngham had already transferred to Spain. Wickes stopped taking prizes and set sail for America; in sight of the American coast his ship foundered, killing him and almost all of its 130 hands. The other American raiders operating off the French coast either returned home or remained in port.
* * *
Arthur Lee, the third commissioner, had concluded that the American pursuit of France was corrupt, that Beaumarchais was a charlatan and a thief, that Deane had unlawfully mixed private business with public and defrauded the United States, and that Franklin had become a French dupe. Lee’s letter campaign to Congress to block payment to Beaumarchais, recall Deane, and compromise Franklin fed the growing divide in Philadelphia between the radicals who had early on pushed independence, mainly the Adamses and the Lees, and the moderates, once led by Franklin and now by Morris.
Deane had no idea that his integrity was being questioned back home. Communications from America were so sparse that he remained in ignorance that his wife had died until, six months after the fact, he learned of her death from a newspaper account. Deane further had no clue that his standing with Congress was also being undermined by the bad behavior of some French officers whom he had commissioned, among them Conway and Coudray. Conway’s flagrant classism was bothering more than his superiors; it caused his brother-in-law, du Bouchet, to decide, after Conway had objected to his proposed promotion, that he must distance himself. Obtaining a transfer to the Northern Department, du Bouchet told Conway, “You have compromised my reputation,” and he also accused Conway of something far worse: depriving du Bouchet of an opportunity for gloire.
Coudray’s designation by Deane as in charge of the army’s artillery and engineers was a larger problem. Knox already oversaw the artillery. While Congress tried to fashion a different slot for Coudray, Washington sent the artillerist to Philadelphia’s safety committee to design defensive works for the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. There Coudray’s abrasive personality and his incessant seeking of extraordinary privilege immediately compromised his welcome. He also deprecated the earlier work done by Kościuszko and others, declaring in his first report: “As to the Situation [at Billingsport], it is well-chosen; it commands the River in the narrowest Part.… As to the Plan or Projection, it is very bad.” He labeled Fort Mifflin “badly situated,” its battery “improperly directed,” and the installation categorically unable to “prevent the Passage of the Enemy.” When Philadelphia did not respond instantly he complained that to prevent his men from being rendered “useless,” Congress must “accelerate the slowness of the Civil and Military administration … to procure the means of execution.” He wanted one thousand workmen every day, including Sundays, to ready the defenses within a month.
When, in mid-July, Duportail and his colleagues arrived in Philadelphia, Congress quickly realized that they were the trained military-fortifications engineers who had been sought. The two French groups claiming the title of engineer clashed. Egotism, an excess of amour propre and a willingness to take umbrage at minor slights—the characteristics of all such clashes—were much in evidence. Duels were narrowly avoided. One of Lafayette’s companions wrote home that when Duportail’s group spoke to Congress, Coudray “was unmasked, and it was proven that he had deceived Congress about everything, even his status, because he [had been] head of an artillery brigade, and not a brigadier-general, and the son of a wine merchant from Rennes [and not noble-born].”
Washington asked Duportail and his group to construct works on the western side of the Schuylkill, where Coudray’s group was not engaged, since, as Washington advised the area commander, “I would not wish Monsr. Portail to interfere in their quarter, and setting [him and Coudray] to work together would only create confusion and widen the Breach.” Adding to Duportail’s distress was that Congress commissioned him as colonel, a rank he protested as too low to assure obedience to his commands by the enlisted men who must dig, hew, haul, and carpenter. In August, when Congress elevated Coudray to a newly minted post, inspector general of ordnance and military manufactories, Duportail and his fellow Mézières graduates made plans to return to France the following January, at the end of their term of employment, but until then to do whatever Washington wanted.
By the time Lafayette presented himself to Congress in July 1777, he was just another in a long run of French officers, many of whom were causing trouble. After a harrowing trip overland from Charleston, Lafayette handed his letters of introduction to Morris and was referred to Congressman James Lovell of Massachusetts. Lovell surprised Lafayette and his entourage by his articulate and colloquial command of their language, and by the vehemence of his pique at Deane. He also went on a tirade against Borre for his incompetence in the field, Conway for terrorizing his men with endless drills, and Coudray for his insufferable manner. Such deplorable activity by French officers, Lovell implied, demonstrated that there was no reason to honor Lafayette’s commission. The marquis and his men were stunned.
Lovell was soon mollified in regard to Lafayette, although not to Deane, whose recall he began to advocate. Congress offered Lafayette a high rank on the condition that he serve as a volunteer with no expectation of a field command. Lafayette, insulted, wanted to sail for home, but de Kalb persuaded him that in light of the brouhaha attendant on his leaving France he would look ridiculous should he return without having served in America. The country’s newest major general then accepted assignment as a Washington aide-de-camp.
De Kalb had an even more difficult time with Congress, which first refused to honor his commission and then asked him too to serve without pay. As he told his wife, “Though I ardently desired to serve America, I did not mean to do so in spendi
ng part of my own and my children’s fortune—for what is deemed generosity in the Marquis de Lafayette would be downright madness in me, who does not possess one of the first-rate fortunes.” Only after de Kalb threatened to expose Deane’s doings to the American press and to sue Congress for bringing him to North America on false premises did he win permission to stay and to be paid for his service, a course of action urged on Congress by Lafayette.
Lafayette’s non-English-speaking companions were sent home without much of a murmur from him, but he interceded for de Kalb because they had become good friends. The middle-aged, non-noble-born veteran and the young, noble would-be soldier had bonded during the marquis’s period in hiding, prior to their departure from France, when he had lived at de Kalb’s home south of Versailles. And as the pair had crossed the Atlantic, de Kalb helped the marquis learn English. De Kalb would shortly write to the secretary of the French War Department:
The friendship with which [Lafayette] has honored me since I made his acquaintance, and that which I have vowed to him because of his personal qualities, oblige me to have that deference for him. No one is more deserving than he of the consideration he enjoys [in America]. He is a prodigy for his age; he is the model of valor, intelligence, judgment, good conduct, generosity, and zeal for the cause of liberty for this continent.
By August 24, 1777, when Washington astride a white horse marched his twelve thousand troops through Philadelphia on their way to fight the British approaching the city, Lafayette rode at his flank. He had charmed Washington as he had de Kalb, by his willingness to learn, intelligence, optimism, and courteous behavior. Washington asked two aides, John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom spoke French—Hamilton from having been raised in the French-speaking Caribbean and Laurens because of his French Huguenot background and education in Geneva—to assist Lafayette in learning English. The three became inseparable, and known for their conjoint drinking and carousing.
How the French Saved America Page 8
