Franklin and Deane now wrote the committee urging action in every sea where British carried on commerce. He had a vital part in transforming the flow of war supplies from a too little, too late dribble into a steady stream which insured an American victory. When Stormont appeared at Versailles Vergennes assured him that the Reprisal and her prizes had been ordered to leave French waters within 24 hours. 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. Spain had been fighting Portugal in South America and had favored just such an alliance with the hope of getting Portugal as her share of the plunder. In 1776, Louis XVI was just 22 years old and had been king for only two years. The powder was stolen; Bermuda was fed. There was no good news at Passy. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. That was its only point; Vergennes would soon learn of this long interview with the British representative, and he might be worried if Franklin neglected to tell him anything about it. The chief French ammunition dumps were Martinique and Cap Franois (now Cap Haitien) on Santo Domingo, known to seagoing Americans simply as the Cape. The Spanish shipped to New Orleans and Havana, and the British chose islands convenient to Washingtons chief arsenal, the Dutch island of St. Eustatia. The Stamp Act riots were noisy on the land, but the seas were quiet and busy. Finally, not daring to return to France, he made for Cap Ferrol in Spain. That switched him to the Caribbean trade. France is a major contributor to the Defeat-ISIL Coalition. The merchant was the intendant for supplying clothing for the French Armyand of late the American Army, for he had given Beaumarchais a million livres worth of clothing on credit. As the French Revolution was inspired by the American Revolution, it is easy to determine that the two must have similarities. In that short interval he had seen his people take up arms for a desperate war, declare themselves a nation, and make the first cautious moves in foreign relations. But his most important work was with the new firm of Hortalez & Company, which really meant the House of Bourbon. On May 2, 1776, Louis XVI signed documents committing France to action as a secret American ally, in violation of her treaties with Britain. When they arrived at Martinique, the Americans were so cordially received that Bingham settled down as resident agent for Congress. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It made the French . Hodge was not released until the last of the fishing fleet was safely home in France. The move was long overdue, for the Americans had been making a brilliant success of their sea raids all over the Atlantic and the Caribbean. 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. He welcomed routine, even a pernicious routine, but any crisis produced a violent reaction. 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. British Debt. He was annoyed to find that Bancroft was in London, making contact with the mission rather difficult. The Battle of Saratoga was an extensive and punishing conflict and a key victory for the Americans in the Revolutionary War. It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. Within 50 years, the European empires in the Americas would shrink and new nations would spread across the whole of the Americas. 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. For diplomatic reasons, he always pretended a vast ignorance of Hortalez & Companya feat like hiding an elephant in a hat. He added, Take care that America and the West Indies dont glide through our fingers.. She threaded the colonies and Britain with her spies; Versailles knew much better than Whitehall how the Revolution was shaping. Franklin could make his quip about Philadelphia taking Howe while he privately worried about his family and friends there, about Washingtons reverses, and the dreadful paralysis that had seized the French ministry. These were proposed by your friend [A. Lee], evaded by his colleagues.. 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. Edmund Pendleton was, according to John Adams . On January 6 Wentworth was closeted for two hours with Franklin and Deane, having stipulated that Arthur Lee was to be excluded. He did extremely well in these successive careers, and now at forty held a position of high honor. France's Debt Problems. This wealthy and devoted young Marylander had been educated in England and was qualified for diplomatic assignments. If successful, France would get as her share half the Newfoundland fishery and all the sugar islands; Spain would be enriched by Portugal and the Floridas, and the United States would gain Canada, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. A swarm of workmen then changed the marks of the vessels by slapping on new coats of paint, changing the figurehead, and such devices. The stench of treachery was in the air. The glorious news of General Gatess victory at Saratoga reached Passy about the first of December, 1777, by a Charleston ship, and on the fourth it was confirmed by Jonathan Loring Austin, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War, who had rushed to France in a specially chartered vessel. 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. This treaty was a promise from France to help the fight against the British. To gain time, he placated Stormont by arresting the three Wickes vessels (which kept them safe from the British warships on patrol) and by promising that the new cutter being fitted for Conyngham would be sold. In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. He could not punish Conyngham, who was in parts unknown, so he had William Hodge arrested and sent to the Bastille. Nearing France, Dr. Franklin changed the captains orders. Franklins hosts were the merchants Pliarne and Penet, who had little standing in Nantes, but who may have been subsidized by Vergennes. This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. Sieur Montaudoin shared many interests with Franklin; both were members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, enthusiasts of the new physiocratic school, and Masons. Their difficulties in shipping out supplies to America were also greatly increased, for Lee had set down everything he could learn without coding it. It is true that these countries, and to some extent Spain, had for some time been shipping out contraband for America, mostly through their Caribbean islands. Contrary winds kept the Reprisal from entering the Loire to make the port of Nantes. 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. 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. The Hortalez ships, scattered as they were at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Le Havre, and Dunkirk, were still too conspicuous to be missed by the busy British spies. how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution. Affairs at Nantes became more and more tangled, and William Lee did nothing to straighten them out. When Vergenness orders came through to sell the Revenge , nobody was alarmed. France, planning a war of revenge, saw in the growing revolt of the thirteen colonies a chance to weaken her chronic enemy, and by 1766 she was ready to rush to their support if they broke with England. The sacred British mails were rushed down to Passy, and then the storm broke at Versailles. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. After Lees visit he proffered no more aid and listened to Floridablanca. The first diplomatic exchange between the United States and a foreign power was highly personal: Franklin and Vergennes sizing each other up. But Beaumarchais had already outlined his plan for Hortalez & Company in a memoir to the King, and he persuaded Vergennes that this was the perfect device for concealing the Bourbon conspiracy against Britain. The American Revolution occurred during a period that some historians refer to as the "Second Hundred Years War" between France and Britain. During 1775, in London on a royal errand, he was in close touch with the American patriots. France Allied with American Colonies. He had come to the point where he must drop his perilous but always enjoyable collaboration with Franklin and play for France alone. Similar to MORE But in mid-July Conyngham took his unharmed cutter out to sea and anchored at a safe rendezvous. His jealousy of Franklin, which grew into a nightmare for Americans on two continents, had begun in 1770 when Massachusetts appointed Franklin its agent in England, and Lee his inactive deputy to replace him if he left England or if he died. By then Congress had set up two secret committees on both of which Franklin was extremely busy. The situation at home was alarming. Franklin remembered the bitter crisis of the summer when Louis XVI had agreed to armed intervention and then had capitulated to his uncle. They all hated and feared Britain as the newly dominant nation of Europe. In France, however, this separation of function was impossible. A phenomenal number of men escaped Old Mill Prison at Plymouth; they scaled the walls, dug long tunnels under them, or bribed the guards to let them through the gates. But Franklin and Deane knew what to expect from Arthur Lee. For the first time since Britain was a maritime power, Deane wrote Morris, the River Thames and others of its ports were crowded with French and other ships taking in freight, in order to avoid the risk of having property captured.. At once, on March 17, the commissioners sent memoirs to the French and Spanish ministries urging a triple war against Britain and her ally Portugal. 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. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, France supports U.S. engagement in the peace process. Between 1778 and 1782 the French provided supplies, arms and ammunition, uniforms, and, most importantly, troops and naval support to the beleaguered Continental Army. The misunderstanding was cleared up, but meanwhile Deane was bitter about Morris and bitter about the energies he had poured into his public life, only to be systematically destroyed by the Lees. When the royal nod transmogrified Beaumarchais into Roderigue Hortalez, he wrote Lee over that signature, announcing the formation of his house and his intended shipments to the Cape, to be paid for by remittances of American tobacco. To Vergennes, Americans were shedding their blood in order to bleed England. He had connived in the Conyngham raid in the confidence that the next time Stormont came fuming into his Cabinet with threats of war, he could hand the pestiferous ambassador his portfolio and wish him a pleasant old age in England. Spain had ceased her royal aids to America. The Revolution precipitated a series of European wars, forcing the United States to articulate a clear policy of neutrality in order to avoid being embroiled in these European conflicts. It was a delusion that cost him and the country dear and brought no profit to Tom Morris. The Nantucket half of Franklin was always strong, and he longed to see how the captain and ship behaved in an engagement. He had written his own instructions for Commissioner Franklin to carry out. His widening circle of intimates included people of great influence: Masons, scientists and scholars, men and women of the aristocracy. Franklin, bobbing a thermometer over the Reprisal s rail to take the temperatures of the Gulf Stream, could think about the life of the sea, this western Atlantic and warm Caribbean which nature had chosen as the home for the new race of Americans. "Rear alliance"), aiming at allying with countries situated on the opposite side or "in the back" of an adversary, in order to open a second front encircling the adversary and thus re . By a natural process the activities of the mission were divided. His policy was to reconcile Britain and the United States; never, if he could help it, would Spain go to war on the American side. However, over time divisions of opinion became apparent between federalists and anti-federalists. The French government has immediately recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultation in response to America's recently announced national security partnership with the United . The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. The American Revolution had a multifaceted effect in France, extending the national debt, contributing . And the French people, cheering in the streets and squares, were as proud of Saratoga, he wrote home, as if it had been a Victory of their own Troops over their own Enemies.. These prospects were bleak enough in December, 1775, but Franklin sent Bonvouloir back with such a rosy report that they immediately improved. In his contract Bancroft agreed to a long list of particulars. 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.. The fight for American independence piqued the interest of Europe's most powerful colonial powers. Dr. Bancroft was an old friend of Franklins from his London days. There were sixty-odd American merchants established in Nantes, and when Franklin considered that all this activity was being repeated on a somewhat smaller scale in Bordeaux, Lorient, Le Havre, and Dunkirk, he felt that the Franco-American alliance was already a reality. After the Seven Years' War, Britain found itself in about twice as much debt . The Declaration was passed with independence a hope on the far side of a hopeless-seeming war. This move had been made after Franklin left Philadelphia, and the bad news would not reach Paris for months. Though facing insurmountable odds, the underdog naval forces of the young United States proved their savvy by helping to defeat Great Britain in the War for Independence. Which French foreign minister and supporter of American independence convinced the French king to form an alliance with the Patriots? At the first hint of this the Doctor tendered his resignation, which to his relief was not accepted. Like Great Britain, France had a young king. No charge was made against Deane, but for two years Congress kept him in Philadelphia at its pleasure while the press vilified him. French ships engaged British vessels almost immediately after Britain declared war on France in March of 1778. 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. This was interesting; evidently the expected overture from England was at hand. The exhibit traces the American naval effort in its three components: the Continental Navy, state navies, and privateers. A disguised British vessel at Dunkirk had alerted the warships, and as soon as the Revenge was in the open sea she was chased by several British frigates, sloops of war, and cutters. The idling envoys to Vienna, Berlin, and Tuscany not only buzzed around Passy day after day but tried to rewrite Franklins treaties. 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. The providence which was evidently favoring the American cause got the rest of the fleet safely to the mainland except the Seine , which the British captured after she had unloaded part of her cargo on Martinique. 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. 1778-1782. In 1757, Franklin went to England to represent the Pennsylvania Assembly as a diplomat in its fight against the descendants of the Penn . Carmichael wrote a strong-action letter to William Bingham on Martinique, mincing no words as to the policy being carried out in France: I think your situation of singular consequence to bring on a war so necessary to assure our independence, and which the weak system of this court seems studiously to avoid. Many of them were now flocking to Europe, for the word had been passed of the hospitality of French and Spanish ports if the proper techniques of evasion were followed. He helped Beaumarchais buy and fit out eight ships, prudently scattered in various ports: the Amphitrite, Mercure, Flammand, Mre Bobie, Seine, Thrse, Amelia , and Marie Catherine . He had made Saratoga possible. 2. For all his enjoyment of high life and high-level intrigue, he was a seismograph about social upheavals and an intellectual who understood their necessity. 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. All George III had to offer his erring children, who would of course return to colonial status, was the repeal of the obnoxious acts since 1763, which had precipitated the war. He came down to Passy to receive one of the captains commissions Franklin was empowered to issue, and then Carmichael took charge of him. Despite his own best efforts, Lees mission turned out to be a success. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. Franklin soon warned Congress not to enlarge its connections with this questionable pair. In order to make the war effective he reminded Vergennes of things Vergennes could do. 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. Like the first conflict of that name, it was a period of intermittent warfare and political and economic rivalry between the two powers. 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. Even Vergennes was now lukewarm. How did the French Alliance contribute to the American Revolution? The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. Tom Morris was dragging out the last months of his wretched life, and Lee saw no point in beating a dead horse. Arthur Lee, who would have ruined the secret project if he had been in Paris to interfere with it, was busy elsewhere. Franklin looked upon these fleets with the lust of a patriot whose country was in mortal danger for lack of their support. The two Lee brothers in Congress saw that their brothers in London were put in posts of influence. The French Revolution was influenced by the experiences and systems of other nations. Anything known in Congress was apt to percolate to Whitehall.