how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

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. During the last eighteen months Conyngham had been in and out of the port, always hull down before the British realized he had vanished, and this time they were determined to get him. It inspired the French to launch their own revolution for liberty and equality. The Role of France and LaFayette in the American Revolution - French Possum Franklin dealt with these suicidal moves in his usual oblique fashion. British spies were everywhere. But before this blackout settled down Congress managed to get dispatches through, which in effect begged Franklin to manage his side of the desperate crisis as he saw fit. By late June the captain and his men were released from jail, and the, But in mid-July Conyngham took his unharmed cutter out to sea and anchored at a safe rendezvous. In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. A new nation had emerged, and in time each individual would realize his new identity. It was three weeks before Wentworth managed to get an interview with Franklin, and he spent the interval in terror of imprisonment and even assassination by the French, whose agents were around him in clouds. He was never suspected by anybody but Arthur Lee, who suspected everybody but his own secretaries, who were almost invariably British agents. However, Franklin was a wizard at intrigue, and many secrets lie with him in the Christ Church burying ground. It was with the greatest difficulty, he wrote, I persuaded them to insist on the recognition of our sovereignty, and the acknowledgement of our independence. When Vergenness orders came through to sell the Revenge , nobody was alarmed. Had France lost the race for American friendship? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. 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. The French, who had close touch with the Americans, were victorious in incorporating Enlightenment principles into a new governmental system. A member of the Royal College of Physicians, in 1773 he was elected to the Royal Society under the sponsorship of Franklin, the astronomer royal, and the kings physician. It is the House of Crommelin at Amsterdam which is chiefly concerned in this trade with the Colonies, tho some others have their share., In later reports Sir Joseph drew such an alarming picture of Dutch gunrunning, especially to the Caribbean, that the British sent a Navy sloop and cutter to spend the winter at Texel Island near Amsterdam. He and his friend the Marquis de Bouille, the new governor of Martinique, had a privateer fleet with American masters and French and Spanish crews which was making itself felt in the Caribbean. Podcast: Libert, Unit, Egalit. Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, had been sputtering at Vergennes for two years about the shipping of contraband from French ports, and now he raised such a storm that the minister had to forbid the sailing of one Hortalez vessel after the other. Plainly neither side wanted to start hostilities, and they had perfected a system for avoiding a rupture. 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. Now the picture had entirely changed, and Spain hoped to make peace with the new king on the Portuguese throne. King Louis XVI was born in 1754 and was pronounced king of France when he succeeded his grandfather in 1774. So too was our want of guns, supplies, and everything needed in a war against one of the major powers of the earth. This theft was not discovered until the pouch was opened in America and proved to contain nothing but the blank paper substituted by Hynson. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over . The French Revolution was one of the most senseless . However, Franklin had boarded the Reprisal for that very purpose. It is hard to see how the patriots could have started their war, or kept it going, without the help of the islanders. Bancroft had sped to London, mainly to make a killing on the stock market, but he would not fail to bring George III the bad news. A young girl began having strange fits. Later that year, the Franco-American army marched 700 miles south to besiege Gen. Charles Cornwallis' British army at Yorktown, while . His new cutter, the, When Vergenness orders came through to sell the, 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. A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . Benjamin Franklin And The French Alliance | AMERICAN HERITAGE This cat and mouse game was only part of the new turn in French policy. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. France in the American Revolution | American Battlefield Trust Franklin and Deane were at the top of that long list. Late in October, 1776, Benjamin Franklin sailed for France to direct the foreign sector of the extraordinary war into which his young country had been plunged. Franklins experiment had been a complete success in the laboratory sense; the sea raids had brought England and France to the verge of war. They found the star of them all in Dunkirk. He was lulled by the specious truce with Francebut how would he feel if Captain Wickes captured a royal packet carrying the royal mails? He had spent eighteen years in England as colonial agent and the last eighteen months at home in the Continental Congress. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. Deane, Carmichael, and Jonathan Williams were on the watch for daring and trustworthy captains for Admiral Franklins strategic naval force. Still hopeful that Congress had ships to command, they spoke of raids on Greenland whalers and Hudson Bay fishing fleets, and urged that Navy ships convoy shipping in the Caribbean, since England would now send privateers and heavy units of her fleet there. He went on with suggestions for arming vessels in Martinique and manning them with French seamen, which must have amused Bingham, who was already busy at this very work. How long could he continue? The Treaty of Alliance (1778) between the United State and France was signed February 6, 1778. Wickes took two small merchantmen which ran down their colors with alacrity. In short, England and the Bourbons had tacitly agreed that their war might be postponed indefinitelyand while they dallied, physical danger and sickening of hope were paralyzing America. 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. Hundreds of privateers were at their work of economic attrition, wearing down Britains strength by blows against her merchant shipping. Vergennes decided that honor was preferable to peace, faced down an ultimatum from England, and got the two Navy ships safely to sea, where they would have to take their chances with the British warships waiting for them. Deane was in and out of the Passy house, keeping his hotel quarters for business and the entertaining of transient sea captains and a horde of friends. Franklin comforted himself by beginning his magnificent work for the prisoners at Forton and the Old Mill in England, masters and men of the Continental Navy and the privateer fleet who were classed as pirates by George III and who sickened and starved in his antiquated prisons. With great fanfare Lee proposed to make Prussia a second France. They were sure that the men who were shouldering the executive functions of a nonexistent Administration were in the wrong: Washington, Franklin, Morris, Deane, John Jay, and their hardheaded allies. Which French foreign minister and supporter of American independence convinced the French king to form an alliance with the Patriots? It was plain that Vergennes rather disliked him and gave every evidence that he was dealing with him only because he represented someone important. 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 French Alliance [ushistory.org] The French Revolution also influenced U.S. politics, as pro- and anti- Revolutionary factions sought to . But his eventual victory depended on two essentials which only Europe could provide: military supplies of all sorts and a powerful navy. All this was excruciating, since Lee had trumpeted in letters home that he had the ministry and Hortalez in his pocket. The American victory secured critical financial support from the French. It attempted to pay down that debt by taxing colonists through the Stamp Act, generating far more resentment than revenue. 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. These were proposed by your friend [A. Lee], evaded by his colleagues.. There was merely enthusiasm for the American cause, Stormont reported to Whitehall, on the part of the Wits, Philosophers and Coffee House Politicians who are all to a man warm Americans.. He made this gesture impressive by sending two sloops of war to Dunkirk to take the captain and his men and deliver them to the local jail. He supported his private investment in the American future by using his fleet of a dozen ships for Caribbean trade on the return voyage to France, and this sugar trade brought him profits to invest in more goods for America. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Franklin labored incessantly to get prisoners exchanged in the time-honored way, with only partial success. Spain had suffered less, but she was tied to France by the Bourbon Family Compact. His beloved wife had died, and his best friend Robert Morris had thrown him over because he had told the truth about Tom. He already knew Deane, and wished not to know Arthur Lee, but he was consumed with curiosity about Franklin. The greatest suppressed scandal of the war was the British trade with the enemy on Statia. 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. 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. No peace would be made except by the general consent. 3. It made the French . Copyright 1949-2022 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. It is also true that Franklin could have helped along such conspiratorial work without leaving a trace of his part of it. Vergennes sensed that the benign old Doctor was ready to fence with naked steel, that he perfectly realized France was playing the old game of power rivalry, and that he would co-operate in the gameup to a pointto keep France as an ally. But he had not reckoned on the reversal of Spanish policy. Since Nantes was the key port for American purposes, Franklin made a personal sacrifice and sent his grandnephew Jonathan Williams there as the special agent for the commissioners. Thus he was the perfect performer in maritime histrionics that Franklin needed for his plan of implicating France in a conspicuous insult to England. was a war only between the French and the Native Americans. He only succeeded in quarreling with them both, and when he tried to see Vergennes, he was quite properly snubbed. 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. Vergennes was alarmed. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. Louis XVI was making a new advance of 3,000,000 livres to Congress. Franklin soon warned Congress not to enlarge its connections with this questionable pair. How did the three estates contribute to the revolutionary mood in French Alliance, French Assistance, and European diplomacy during the But he was quite happy to spend the year of 1777 in the humbler role of itinerant trouble shooter in the French ports. The French Revolution | American Experience | PBS A photograph of Edouard de Laboulaye from the Galerie Contemporaine collection. The British take Charleston, S.C., capture a large patriot army, and deal the rebels one of their worst defeats of the war. His affection for Franklin and Deane had the ring of sincerity, and years later, when Deane was of no possible use to him, he was still the devoted friend. Franklin knew what he had won for his beloved country. The American was adulated, wined and dined. The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. In order to bring the reluctant enemies to blows he had to influence chiefly two men: George III, who was just as set against a French war as he was adamant in the American conflict, and Vergennes, the mentor of a young and inexperienced king. 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. The King was always anxious to avoid friction with England, and Lees visit would arouse her suspicions. France and the American Revolution 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. He returned to Paris with his usual air of pompous impeccability, for his conscience was light. This released a great stock of surplus arms for Hortalez to buy up cheaply. That switched him to the Caribbean trade. The capture of the Bastille ignited one of the greatest social upheavals in Western . Early in 1774 Franklin had written from London to a friend at home that he wished Americans might know what we are and what we have. After much private groping and anguish he had discovered what he was: not a colonial American, but that new man, an American. 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. France and Britain drifted into hostilities without a declaration of war when their fleets off Ushant off the northwest coast of France on June 17, 1778. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787. In the summer of 1775 Colonel Henry Tucker, whose clan dominated island affairs, came to Philadelphia in a state of worry and resentment. 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. France's Debt Problems. Arthur Lee, who would have ruined the secret project if he had been in Paris to interfere with it, was busy elsewhere. People heavily associate the French Revolution with the American Revolution, due to the many general similarities. As for Dr. Dubourg, this bookish man was an incongruous visitor at Versailles by June of 1776, by which time he had received Franklins appointment as the French agent of his Committee of Secret Correspondence. He was a bosom friend of Alderman Lee and had accepted his appointment by the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress as envoy to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. By April American privateers had taken so many British seamen prisoner that the British fleet was not half manned, and Stormont hinted to Vergennes that peace could not last much longer if France continued to arm the United States. By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. One result of the raid by the Dunkirk Pirate was the fact that British merchants no longer trusted the Admiraltys ability to protect British ships. He was free for a time to be the scientist, finding in nature a fidelity to laws beyond the reach of human meddling. Free subscription>>, Please consider a donation to help us keep this American treasure alive. 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. There would soon be an unfavorable change in the Spanish ministry: Grimaldi, friendly to America, would be replaced as chief minister by the Count of Floridablanca, who feared that an America now independent would before long overrun Spanish possessions in the New World. He had to fend off a break with England until France was ready for war. 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. For once Wentworth brought the King good news, the only kind he could ever believe. He terrorized the towns on the east coast of England and Scotland. His friend Sieur Montaudoin bought a great Dutch ship and named it, Silas Deane was invaluable. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the U.S. as an independent nation and promoted trade between France and America. Some inner mechanism in the Lee genes transmuted whatever was wrong with the Lees into something much worse that was wrong with their enemies. At Passy Bancroft was a loved and trusted figure, and Vergennes so admired him that after the war he sent Bancroft on a highly confidential mission to Ireland. How did the French Alliance contribute to the American Revolution? It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Shipping was at a premium; in the last year the price of vessels had tripled. 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. Almost every transaction carried out for Congress was a mixture of public and private business, an accepted practice. In 1776, the Continental Congress sent diplomat Benjamin Franklin, along with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, to France to secure a formal alliance. But in mid-July Conyngham took his unharmed cutter out to sea and anchored at a safe rendezvous. 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.. 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. only affected North America. 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. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Most of the supply was still down in the Caribbean, but the fact remains that there must have been more powder on the continent than the various colonies and the merchants were willing to release to Congress. Meanwhile Arthur Lee and his younger brother William joined the floating malcontents who supported the flamboyant John Wilkes and helped elect him lord mayor of London late in 1774. As the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution, it is easy to determine that the two must have similarities.

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