how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

Plainly neither side wanted to start hostilities, and they had perfected a system for avoiding a rupture. Vergennes promptly granted the requested interview. Offered the bait of gunpowder, Congress swallowed the hook which Franklin had prayerfully included and ruled that any vessel bringing war supplies to the seaboard would be allowed to load up with produce. France, wretchedly poor at the bottom of its society and jaded and apprehensive at the top, was rushing towards its own revolution, and the violent emotions which would ruin the French Revolution were tripped off in wild demonstrations of welcome. It looked like a checkmate. The French loan was a godsend. There is a distinct anomaly in the fact that even with captures from British transports Congress scraped together for Washingtons use in 1775 only about forty tons of gunpowder. His Amphitrite and Mercure were already home, having delivered their supplies at Portsmouthgunpowder and blankets and clothing, sixty cannon, and 12,000 stand of arms. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. The arms of which Doniol speaks had long since been amassed, and it seems probable that Dubourg and Vergennes discussed other matters. Wentworth, he wrote North, is an avowed stock jobber and I never let that go out of my mind. 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. 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. But somehow, even when he acted in a cheap way, Silas Deane was not cheap. Just a year after independence was declared the Americans lost Fort Ticonderoga to Burgoyne, and on September 26 Howe entered Philadelphia. 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. The great powers seemed less inclined than ever to begin their war. Here are five ways the French helped Americans win their freedom. He had reached an impasse: France would not help America unless America showed promise of winning her war, and America could not win without French help. He had come to the point where he must drop his perilous but always enjoyable collaboration with Franklin and play for France alone. 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. He made for the English Channel, where he took four small merchantmen, which he sent to Lorient under prize masters. When Vergenness orders came through to sell the Revenge , nobody was alarmed. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a nightmare figure. The man who believed there was never a good war or a bad peace was about to use all his powers to sweep the Bourbon nations into the War of Independence. He sent his first secretary, Grard de Rayvenal, to Passy with his congratulations and the suggestion that Franklin might now press the treaty negotiation which France had avoided for nearly a year. 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. Vergennes, on that December day of jubilation, did some cooler thinking of his own and rightly guessed that the British would try to effect a conciliation with the Americans before they won any more campaigns. He had spent years in Surinam and was an expert on tropical plants; he had written a natural history of Guiana and perfected new vegetable dyes for cloth. America could fight only her own sort of war on the seas, and this had started before Lexington and would continue long after Yorktown. This was a bitter blow to Vergennes and a calamity to the Americans. France is one of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) top five troop contributors. If he had been a mere speculator in gunrunning like many of his compatriots, or an appropriator of Bourbon funds, as Arthur Lee claimed, he would have seen that the game was up. He was hardly prepared for the booming activity in Americas behalf that he found in Nantes. But his most important work was with the new firm of Hortalez & Company, which really meant the House of Bourbon. He signed only his initials. The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. The American Revolution of 1775-1789, which concluded as the revolution in France was unfolding, was perhaps the most significant. Franklin and Deane co-operated with him by being very discreet about evading this prohibition, but the year which had begun so brilliantly in maritime operations was in the doldrums. 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. The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. Moreover, every port in Europe was under the surveillance of the British Admiraltys intelligence service, directed from Rotterdam by Madame Marguerite Wolters, widow of the former chief. When Deane arrived in Paris in the summer of 1776 Arthur Lee rushed over from London. The French Revolution was influenced by the experiences and systems of other nations. Franklin found that the American stock had lately plunged to its lowest point. Yet, it represented much more to those individuals who proposed the gift. Revolutionary leadership of George Washington Head of the colonial forces. American colonists hoped for possible French aid in their struggle against British forces. When he arrived at Nantes Penet kept him drunk and hostile to the Paris commissioners. 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. He had written his own instructions for Commissioner Franklin to carry out. Had France lost the race for American friendship? 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. Bancroft was a supreme spy, but he preserved a curious code of his own, almost a code of honor, about what he would or would not do. He decided that Jonathan Williams, the soul of probity, should be drawn into the Lee crusade against all rivals, and soon Congress was hearing about Williams embezzlements of public funds. Franklin prudently released his grandnephew from his post as special agent for the mission, and he remained in Nantes in private business. Franklin had already urged that France and Spain conclude treaties of amity and commerce with the United States, and his letter went farther, offering these powers a firm guarantee of their present possessions in the West Indies, plus any new islands they conquered in a war growing out of their aid to the United States. Almost consciously Lee longed for that consummation. 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. But the harm had been done. Explain the purpose of a colonial stamp tax, how it would be implemented and which people or groups it would affect. 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. George Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army in 1775. A new nation had emerged, and in time each individual would realize his new identity. However, Franklin was a wizard at intrigue, and many secrets lie with him in the Christ Church burying ground. The Comte de Vergennes. Privateers could accomplish wonders, but they could not fight the great British ships of the line. Shipping was at a premium; in the last year the price of vessels had tripled. Americans were at first enthusiastic in support of the revolution. (The third captain of that cruise was staying behind to take out one of the new American frigates built at Nantes.) In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . Gardoqui proposed a sensible solution: he and the retiring foreign minister, Grimaldi, would arrange a secret rendezvous just across the border, and Lee would not enter Spain at all. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain's position in the New World. Economic historians will recognize the invaluable research and work of two individuals in particular that this article draws from: Merrill Jensen, and . Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. New York: Random House, 2015. It could not supply Washington gunpowder in 1775 nor cope with the enlarging task of war procurement. In 1776, the Continental Congress sent diplomat Benjamin Franklin, along with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, to France to secure a formal alliance. When they arrived at Martinique, the Americans were so cordially received that Bingham settled down as resident agent for Congress. 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. All the colonizing powers tried to keep New World produce flowing home to the motherland. On the last day of the year the bad news arrived from Spain: Charles III was unwilling to enter an alliance with America. On the third day of May he seized the Prince of Orange and brought her into Dunkirk, along with a British brig picked up on the way. The French support NATO modernization efforts and are leading contributors to the NATO Response Force. His new cutter, the Revenge , had been bought by William Hodge of Philadelphia, who had also obtained Conynghams first ship. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. When Deane left Philadelphia on his mission to France, Franklin suggested that Edward Bancroft would be a useful consultant on European affairs, and so it proved. It meant only the familiar rite of changing the property on paper. 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. The Treaty of Alliance (1778) between the United State and France was signed February 6, 1778. The thirteen colonies were in the nightmare situation of trying to fight the strongest power in the Western world almost barehanded. During the American Revolution, the American colonies faced the significant challenge of conducting international diplomacy and seeking the international support it needed to fight against the British. He was such a master at dissimulation that he kept the British ambassador, Lord Stormont, convinced all through 1774 that nothing illicit was going on. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. But Beaumarchais was on a crusade for American independence, and he would not drop it until independence was won. 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. The dramatist became a whirlwind of activity. Congress would not even sanction commerce with friendly powers because that was tantamount to declaring independence. These prospects were bleak enough in December, 1775, but Franklin sent Bonvouloir back with such a rosy report that they immediately improved. He did extremely well in these successive careers, and now at forty held a position of high honor. Franklin and Deane were at the top of that long list. George III was uneasy about both Americans because they gambled wildly in stocks and kept mistresses. He could not punish Conyngham, who was in parts unknown, so he had William Hodge arrested and sent to the Bastille. This move had been made after Franklin left Philadelphia, and the bad news would not reach Paris for months. The French navy transported reinforcements, fought off a British fleet, and protected Washington's forces in . 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. Bancroft belonged to the American patriot group in London and wrote able papers defending the cause of the thirteen colonies. William Lee opened the campaign against Deane in a letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee. But if she should declare war on France, we conceive that by the united force of France, Spain, and America, she will lose all her possessions in the West Indies, much the greatest part of that commerce which has rendered her so opulent, and be reduced to that state of weakness and humiliation which she has, by her perfidy, her insolence, and her cruelty both in the east and the west, so justly merited.. In 1757, Franklin went to England to represent the Pennsylvania Assembly as a diplomat in its fight against the descendants of the Penn . No peace would be made except by the general consent. He spent much of the latter half of 1776 in Paris as mentor to the inexperienced American, and the close friendship thus begun lasted as long as Deane lived. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Congress had appointed Jefferson as the third commissioner, but he had declined to serve because of his wifes illness, and the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress rushed their man in as substitute. His contract with Wentworth gave him 500 down, the same amount as yearly salary, and a life pension. Anthony Todd, secretary of the General Post Office, read Franklins letters to people in England. All this was so familiar to Franklin that it did not discourage him; he simply had to be on his guard for the moment when Vergennes would stop playing for the joint interests of both countries and play for France alone. France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. He burned some and sent others to America, the West Indies, or whatever theater of war seemed to need their cargoes most. The King was tireless, and only the quirks and massive stubbornness which were part of his psychosis would now and then hamper the working of his great information machine. Vergennes admitted that open assistance to the United States meant war, but war was in any case inevitable. Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. But he had not reckoned on the reversal of Spanish policy. Communications with Congress were rapidly being snuffed out by the capture of dispatches on the high seas and even more by the skill of British agents in intercepting letters, especially those bound for America. It thus comprises the first seven years of the period of warfare that was continued through the Napoleonic Wars until Napoleon's abdication in 1814, with a year of interruption under the peace of Amiens (1802-03). Every man aboard was lost except the cook. Spain had suffered less, but she was tied to France by the Bourbon Family Compact. The Reprisal was carrying a cargo of indigo worth 3,000 which was intended to pay the early expenses of the Paris mission. But he was too late. He was the dark personality of the family: a paranoid constantly haunted by the most fantastic suspicions of the people around him; a captious, hypercritical man who never married or made a simple friendship; a man with inflated notions of his own Tightness and genius who suffered tortures of jealousy of anybody above him. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. The small matter was to be Conynghams capture of another British packet, this time the one plying to Holland. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. French involvement in the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1783 began in 1776 when the Kingdom of France secretly shipped supplies to the Continental Army of the Thirteen Colonies when it was established in June 1775. He knew that this purpose was the weakening of Britain rather than the emancipation of the United States. It was an entirely new sort of war because the United States was a new sort of country, whose survival depended less on land fighting than on a complex of factors in which Franklin was . It was a delusion that cost him and the country dear and brought no profit to Tom Morris. 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. Franklin faced the critical year of 1777 with the knowledge that the British fleet would pound American hopes to nothing unless France and Britain began their ordained war. The Estates-General was a meeting of the three estates (clergy, nobles, everyone else) that could be called by the French King and was famously and infamously called in 1789 out of a desperate desire to try to push through reforms that would keep France from going bankrupt. DuVal, Kathleen. Beaumarchais wrote masterly letters to Louis XVI, arguing that with timely secret help from France the Americans would win their war and clip Britains wings. Wentworth reported to Eden that he had found Deane vain, desultory and subtle and indeed the commissioner must have had some difficulty keeping a straight face. Sieur Montaudoin shared many interests with Franklin; both were members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, enthusiasts of the new physiocratic school, and Masons. D.) It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. The first diplomatic exchange between the United States and a foreign power was highly personal: Franklin and Vergennes sizing each other up. Getting a fleet for Washington was high on Franklins agenda. 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. Franklins most pressing assignment was to buy or borrow eight battleships from France and to urge both Bourbon powers, France and Spain, to send fleets at their own expense to act in concert with these ships. 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. The fact that he was a genius, and a genius of such multiple gifts that he might easily inspire alarm or jealousy in others, had early taught him the art of using screens and disguises. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. The two Lee brothers in Congress saw that their brothers in London were put in posts of influence. Stormont then delivered to Vergennes threats only a step removed from war. 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. He was evidently buying arms and setting up a smuggling base in the Low Countries. But Montaudoin and all Nantes had begun to increase clandestine trade with the thirteen colonies about 1770, long before Franklin decided on his personal break with England. War profiteering was pandemic. The French people saw that a revolt could be successfuleven against a major . He was delighted to find his brother William waiting for him in Paris. However, Beaumarchais put his whole soul into his character as friend of the American Revolution. During this period of watchful waiting, Franklin applied political pressure. According to Doniol, Franklin dealt through Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes, a great shipping merchant, and the savant Dr. Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the U.S. as an independent nation and promoted trade between France and America. He demanded every favor under heaven and even wrote Frederick (who refused to receive him) a preposterous letter, in effect telling him how he could run his kingdom better. 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. By October Beaumarchais had spent the original 2,000,000 livres from the Bourbon kings, plus another million from France, and 2,600,000 livres in the form of credit from French merchants. Among the papers was Lees private journal with a log of his Spanish transactions and details of every move made by the Paris mission up to that June. Franklin wrote his Committee of Foreign Affairs of the prodigious success of our armed ships and privateers. London merchants had lost nearly 2,000,000 in their West Indies trade, and insurance had soared to 28 per cent, he boasted. By September, 1775, the crusader was back in Versailles, and with Vergennes intensified the campaign to draw the King into their dangerous project of largescale aid to the colonies. Affairs at Nantes became more and more tangled, and William Lee did nothing to straighten them out. The Nantucket half of Franklin was always strong, and he longed to see how the captain and ship behaved in an engagement. In making this special adaptation of her book for AMERICAN HERITAGE, she has re-created that less familiar but vital struggle behind the scenes which was necessary at Versailles before Cornwallis could march out, in defeat, at Yorktown while the drums beat for the birth of a new nation. Since George III was violently against a war with the Bourbons these warnings disturbed him, but they did not change his fixed purpose to bully the colonies into obedience. As soon as Arthur Lee arrived from London the three commissioners wrote Vergennes announcing their appointment to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with France.

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