How the French Saved America

by Tom Shachtman

  Gates was then 180 miles away. Before the battle at Camden had ended, he had begun his flight, riding some 60 miles from the site before night fell, and equally far each day for the next two. Only then did he stop his flight to write a self-exculpatory report to Congress. Such reports often ruined subordinates’ careers, as this one did for Armand, faulted by Gates for what was, in essence, Gates’s own failure. Although other officers at Camden did not share the commander’s bad opinion of Armand, the Frenchman thereafter had difficulty restoring his reputation. American losses at Camden were nine hundred killed or wounded and one thousand taken captive; it was among the worst American defeats.

  * * *

  The Chevalier de La Luzerne was more gregarious a plenipotentiary than Gérard and worked assiduously at things that Gérard had not. He paid the Reverend Samuel Cooper of Boston and a prominent Philadelphian to write pro-French articles. Cooper, who had recycled his sermons of the French and Indian War era, replacing anti-French with anti-British rhetoric, further influenced New Englanders in articles and sermons espousing the alliance. He was particularly helpful in countering the anti-Gallicians’ attempts to push matters detrimental to the interests of the alliance and to France.

  La Luzerne also developed a conversation circle that included most of the French officers serving in America, with whom he met with regularly, and a correspondence circle with French-speaking American enclaves.

  Mottin de la Balme was an avid member of the inner group. In the spring of 1780 de la Balme needed to call on La Luzerne for assistance. The previous year he had been captured in Maine during a debacle, the Penobscot expedition, and then exchanged. By spring he had no new assignment and had lost his letters of recommendation; Luzerne helped him obtain a copy from Congressman James Lovell. With it and other papers, de la Balme took off for the Indiana territory town of Vincennes and its French-speaking population.

  There he intended to meet up with, or at least to work in the same vein as, George Rogers Clark, who had liberated Vincennes in 1779. Claiming to be a pensionnaire of Louis XVI, de la Balme used that supposed authority to collect Native American allies for a punitive expedition against the Miami, allies of the British, with the aim of seizing the great prize of the area, Detroit, the British stronghold. From Vincennes, in the early summer of 1780, de la Balme sent a petition to La Luzerne on behalf of the city, asking for closer ties with the government of France; and from a headquarters in a local tavern with a French name he issued certificates of appreciation to various Native American leaders. To induce the braves to join his troop he threw alcohol-fueled orgies during which he also took part in drunken rapes.

  By the fall de la Balme and a band that included Native Americans from various tribes and French-speaking settlers from Vincennes and nearby French settlements began to raid small towns in the Wabash River valley, freeing cattle and stealing horses in the name of liberating the towns from British control. However in November, Little Turtle and his main band of Miamis ambushed de la Balme, and in a pitched battle over several days he lost thirty men and was taken prisoner. Notice of the encounter, and de la Balme’s papers, were sent to the ranking British army officer in Detroit; it was clear from the official-looking papers that de la Balme was not an ordinary settler. The British looked forward to questioning him, but he died before reaching Detroit, either from his wounds or by being summarily executed.

  * * *

  French finance minister Necker saw no end in sight to the rising costs of arming France and fighting the British in the Caribbean, Africa, and India as well as in America. Prior to the war, France had been paying 30 percent of the government’s annual budget for debt service on the Seven Years’ War loans; now, with the added expense of waging war, the debt service was approaching 50 percent of the annual budget. Great Britain’s debt service was at the same fraction of the national budget, but the British had more efficient and sustainable ways of taxing the populace, and ready lenders in the London capital market, while Paris had to go to Amsterdam for loans. After France’s lottery ran its course, producing 85 million livres but promising 105 million in prize money and repayments, in 1780 Necker turned to a different funding tool, rentes viagères, government-backed annuities, to be bought by healthy individuals and only paid out upon their reaching old age or to their heirs at their deaths. Previously he had decried such a scheme but now embraced it, using it to raise 260 million livres—on the promise of paying back, in the future, almost double that amount. Most of the income went to fund the government’s everyday and military activities; the loans made to America were a small fraction of the total, usually doled out in the single millions of livres at a time, with the largest lot being 10 million. France’s navy alone was costing more than 120 million a year, up from 28 million annually in the prewar period.

  As financing became more important, Necker’s power grew. It also brought him to a clash with Sartine; when Necker allotted 120 million for naval operations in one year, Sartine needed 20 million more and raised it privately. The next year Sartine told Louis that if he did not get his extra money only sixty of eighty vessels could sail. Louis asked Maurepas: “Shall we dismiss Necker, or shall we dismiss Sartine? I am not displeased with the latter. I think Necker is more useful to us.” When the king would not decide, Necker convinced Marie Antoinette in his favor. In the fall of 1780, to the chagrin of Vergennes, Sartine and Montbarrey were replaced by the Marquises de Castries and de Ségur.

  Philippe-Henri, the Marquis de Ségur, a long-serving senior officer in the army, had lost an arm in an early military encounter and was the third generation of his family to achieve the rank of lieutenant general; he was also the father of Lafayette’s friend. The Marquis de Castries was a soldier of similar age, service, and nobility, and had administrative experience from his years as a governor. De Castries’s understanding of the faults of the military promotion system made him overrule precedent to accelerate elevations for men of proven naval leadership ability—de Grasse, Barras, and Bougainville.

  Ségur, though committed to continuing the reforms begun under Saint-Germain (who had died, but whose papers Ségur often consulted), nonetheless reintroduced the requirement that officers aspiring to the very top ranks of the armed services be able to document four generations of noble forebears. The minister also thought that all the various classes of nobility would serve more usefully if “distributed in the military in an order more analogous to the places they occupied in civil society.”

  * * *

  That supposedly profligate spender, the Rochambeau-Ternay expedition, arrived at Newport on July 10, 1780. The commanders were acutely conscious of what had happened near Newport in 1778, and Rochambeau used d’Estaing’s fiasco as chapter and verse on how not to go about Franco-American relations on American territory. Although Rochambeau was not considered much of a diplomat, on arrival he played that role well, serenading Newporters with his military bands, decreeing parades for their benefit, and above all spending hard cash with them. His success in gaining the approbation of the local citizenry became visible when he asked for help in moving his ill, and five thousand locals responded.

  Rochambeau’s first letter to Washington announced that the king had ordered him to give his fealty to the American general. He added his own words of admiration; after all, to a seasoned combat veteran any general who had successfully fended off the British for five years, kept his army together, and had not been replaced by his political superiors had accomplished quite a bit. To “have no secrets” from Washington, Rochambeau enclosed a copy of the Montbarrey letter, plus another with his secret instructions, which featured such mundane matters as not permitting any part of his corps to be detached from the main body except for brief assignments. All this was prelude to the bad news he had for Washington. Because Rochambeau had been deprived of additional warships by the sending of the Guichen fleet to the Caribbean, and because his viability in Newport was threatened by Arbuthnot’s expected return to New York waters, Roch
ambeau asserted that his French troops and ships would not be ready to conduct offensive operations in America for at least another month.

  Washington’s equally courteous welcome to Rochambeau, written before receiving the French general’s letter, announced that Lafayette would meet Rochambeau to discuss plans. “As a Genl Officer I have the greatest confidence in him—as a friend he is perfectly acquainted with my sentiments & opinions.… All the information he gives, and all the propositions he makes, I entreat you will consider as coming from me.”

  Washington assumed that sending Lafayette would smooth the way for joint Franco-American operations. It did just the opposite. Even though Rochambeau decided not to take umbrage at Washington for not coming himself to Newport, Lafayette’s arrogance during their meeting taxed his courtesy, and he was riled even more by the marquis’s subsequent twelve-page letter. Rochambeau judged Lafayette’s communications insolent and said so in a biting response. His slap had the desired effect: Lafayette apologized and asked forgiveness. This charmed Rochambeau. “Permit me, my dear marquis, to respond to you as would an old father to a son he loves and esteems,” Rochambeau’s next note to Lafayette began, and it went on to offer fatherly advice: After forty years at war he had concluded that the French were not invincible, and so even they should not go into battle against overwhelming odds. He pledged to Lafayette that they would see grand action together—just not now.

  Then the British fleet appeared outside the harbor and Rochambeau had to deal with that, and with the need to care for his ill and wounded—a quarter of his forces—mostly alone, as Ternay was increasingly feeble. The French defended themselves aggressively, defeating British land forays and holding their sea lines, which extended from Narragansett Bay across to Long Island. Rochambeau’s footing in Newport received an unexpected setback when the French agent in Philadelphia refused to honor the Chaumont letter of credit, insisting that Chaumont’s accounts in America were empty, and causing the more rapid than anticipated depletion of the cache of specie that Rochambeau and Ternay had brought with them. Supposedly to compensate for the unavailable credit, the agent then bought cash in Philadelphia, ostensibly for the troops, at a low rate of exchange, but instead of delivering it to Rochambeau at Newport he sold the cash for more than he had paid for it. La Luzerne heard the Newport quartermasters’ howls over this gouging and had Paris recall the agent, but not before considerable damage had been done.

  Rochambeau did not then comprehend the worst of the French forces’ problems: the sorry state of their intended partner, the Continental army—so enfeebled that Washington had felt he could not leave his command, even for a brief meeting with Rochambeau, lest it fall apart. Part of the difficulty was structural. While the individual states continued to keep their heads above water financially, the credit of the central government had been completely destroyed, and as a result it was unable to supply or pay the troops. Congress, having exhausted its means of supporting the Continental army had shifted this burden to the states, only some of which were fulfilling their share of the army’s needs. The underlying reason for all of these difficulties was the weakness of the Continental dollar. Farmers chose not to plant more than their families could use for fear of any excess being confiscated or paid for in near-worthless paper money. Half the enlisted men would have the right to quit service at year’s end, and this time they were expected to do so.

  Supplies compromised, and having lost six thousand soldiers at Charleston, and with Gates mired in South Carolina with several thousand more—Washington had not yet learned of the captures at Camden—America’s forces were at their lowest ebb. Nonetheless he and Rochambeau made plans to meet halfway between their respective headquarters. By mid-September, when both contingents set off for Hartford, news had reached Rochambeau of the British blockade of Brest, preventing the sailing of the remainder of his troops, and Washington had received word of the Camden debacle.

  That set the context for, and served to dampen enthusiasm at, the September 20 meeting of Rochambeau, Ternay, Rochambeau’s son, and several other French aides, with Washington, Lafayette, Knox, Hamilton, and Gouvion. The commanders’ business at Hartford was, first, to find ways to get along. Ternay, ailing, did not play a role. Rochambeau and Washington were quite alike: military-minded to the core, with a firm grasp of the common objective, and always well prepared. Rochambeau had a neatly drawn document with propositions to put to Washington and space allotted in which to record his responses. Rochambeau’s ten questions were a Socratic progression designed to lead the student to agree with the teacher’s preferred conclusion. When to the first of these questions Washington responded, “There can be no decisive enterprise against the maritime establishments of the English in this country, without a constant naval superiority,” his direction was sealed. From then on he could not help but answer the other questions with responses that cumulatively undermined his own multipage plan for a fall attack on New York. Thus, step-by-step he was led to make the conclusion that Rochambeau desired: There could be no joint attack on New York until the arrival of more French troops and ships. Washington and Rochambeau then jointly signed an appeal to Louis XVI for such units.

  A major accomplishment of this meeting was the satisfying of each commander as to the mettle of the other. An additional result, no less salutary for cooperative purposes, was that the French staff emerged impressed with Washington, whose courtesy and consideration of subordinates presented a contrast to their gruff and often cantankerous chief. But Washington also understood, from this meeting, as he put it in a note to Lafayette, that despite Rochambeau’s orders from Louis XVI to treat Washington as his superior officer, “my command of the F-Tps at R Is-d stands upon a very limited state.”

  * * *

  Benedict Arnold used the Hartford conference as the moment to attempt to turn over West Point to the British. The genesis of his plan dated to early 1779, when he had gotten in touch with Major John André. The contact had been made through Arnold’s wife, the former Peggy Shippen, who had known André when Howe’s forces were in Philadelphia. On May 23, 1779, Arnold told André, who had since become Clinton’s adjutant general, “I will cooperate when an opportunity offers” to betray the American cause, in exchange for “some certainty, my property here being secure and a revenue equivalent to the risk and service done.” When the French fleet was welcomed at Newport, Arnold informed André that Washington would go to meet Rochambeau, and that “I have accepted the command at W[est] P[oint] as a post in which I can render the most essential services, and which will be in my disposal.”

  To General Clinton, possession of West Point was “an object of the utmost importance” to the British war effort, since the combined French and American force threatened to oust his army from New York and end the war. The French presence in the area made it imperative for Arnold’s plot to succeed now, or it might never do so.

  Arnold made certain that West Point’s readiness declined, that its defensive works—drawn up mainly by Duportail, Kościuszko, and other French engineers—were not completed, and that many of its troops were dispersed to other locations. When Washington departed for Hartford, Arnold set his plot in final motion and persuaded André to perform his part in it in civilian clothes. Only the chance stopping of André by militia near Tarrytown and the discovery of incriminating papers on him prevented the handover of West Point. Arnold escaped just minutes before Washington arrived at the home that Arnold and his wife had been using. Washington had no idea what Arnold had been up to until Hamilton, who had gone in search of Arnold, returned with the papers taken from André. Washington immediately recognized these as descriptions of West Point and notes from an American council of war, in Arnold’s handwriting. Washington was aghast at the treachery, a very personal blow from a man whom he had repeatedly protected and promoted.

  Because André had been in civilian clothes, had used an alias, and had intended to meet Arnold, he was charged as a spy and could have been summarily execute
d, but Washington decided to hold a court-martial. André was found guilty. Hamilton pleaded with Clinton to exchange André for Arnold, but got nowhere. Then, and despite André’s exemplary behavior in captivity, Washington had no choice but to order André’s death. The creator of the Mischianza was hanged.

  André was mourned by his British colleagues, but their leaders celebrated the arrival of Arnold, America’s most aggressive general, who would now take the field for them with the added motivation of craving revenge on Washington, whom he blamed for André’s death.

  In the halls of power in France and Spain, Arnold’s perfidy was looked upon as another instance of loutish British behavior, of a piece with their use of torture, their overly punitive raids against civilians, and their appalling mistreatment of prisoners.

  16

  “Siberia alone can furnish any idea of Lebanon, Connecticut.”

  —Duc de Lauzun

  When the League of Armed Neutrality had been formed, the Netherlands sought to protect its shipping by joining. The British objected to the Dutch doing so on the grounds that their 1678 treaty required the Dutch to stay out of such alliances. On November 20, 1780, the Netherlands brushed that notion aside and became a signatory. Immediately the British cabinet drew up reasons for declaring war on the Netherlands. Among them were that the Dutch had provided France with war matériel, allowed John Paul Jones to bring captured British prizes into Dutch ports, offered a first salute at the Caribbean island of Saint Eustatius to an American ship, and, based on a draft of a treaty seized when Henry Laurens had been taken prisoner, that the Dutch were planning to ally with America. The cabinet considered irrelevant that the draft treaty was unauthorized by Congress and had been drawn up by private citizens.