how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

There must be a breaking point somewhere in his patience. They were the victims of their friends in Congress, who believed in promiscuous diplomacy as a device for distributing patronage. France is a major contributor to the Defeat-ISIL Coalition. 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. Within 50 years, the European empires in the Americas would shrink and new nations would spread across the whole of the Americas. In August, 1774, Sir Joseph Yorke, for years the British ambassador at The Hague, wrote his superior, the Earl of Suffolk: As the contraband trade carried on between Holland and North America is so well known in England I have not thought it necessary of late to trouble your Lordship with trifling details of ships sailing from Amsterdam for the British Colonies, laden with teas, linnens, etc., But now he had something serious to report: My informations says that the Polly , Captain Benjamin Broadhurst, bound to Nantucket has shipped on board a considerable quantity of gunpowder. On the land, if Washington finally got enough men and guns, he might wear down British troops far from their home base. The French support NATO modernization efforts and are leading contributors to the NATO Response Force. 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. Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. Explain the purpose of a colonial stamp tax, how it would be implemented and which people or groups it would affect. Floridablancas policies prevailed; he wanted to keep the United States too weak to threaten Spanish possessions in America. They were in the best possible hands; Captain Lambert Wickes was one of the few masters seasoned in the merchant fleet who had joined the Continental Navy. The first British protests were made to the French ambassador, Noailles, who blandly replied that in a great nation there are many turbulent spirits eager to run after adventures. He did not attempt to have his turbulent compatriots released from prison. French Empire wanted to take revenge on the British Empire for its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Then, when the diplomatic pressure eased, he would stealthily release them one at a time. But the accident was symbolic: Hortalez & Company had suffered a bouleversement . Captain Wickes, who had been one of the picked men of Morris trading fleet, was chosen for the voyage. In 1757, Franklin went to England to represent the Pennsylvania Assembly as a diplomat in its fight against the descendants of the Penn . With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. If Vergennes had any doubts about Franklins grasp of Bourbon aims, they were resolved by the Doctors masterly letter of January 5. How long could he continue? To formalize the colonial complaints against Parliament. The Battle of Saratoga was an extensive and punishing conflict and a key victory for the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Long before it got into feeble action, eleven of the colonies had started their own navies, and several of them commissioned their own privateer fleets. Compare And Contrast The American Revolution And French Revolution. The French Revolution was a momentous historical event that set enduring patterns for modern revolutionary movements and for much of modern politics in general. Late in May Captain Wickes made a cruise quite around Ireland in company with two other captains and captured eighteen small vessels. 1. 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. Both revolutions began due to the financial problems in their countries. It is also true that Franklin could have helped along such conspiratorial work without leaving a trace of his part of it. The French Revolution was one of the most senseless . Britain had acquired a massive debt fighting the French and Indian War. Sieur Montaudoin shared many interests with Franklin; both were members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, enthusiasts of the new physiocratic school, and Masons. 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. 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. They were in the best possible hands; Captain Lambert Wickes was one of the few masters seasoned in the merchant fleet who had joined the Continental Navy. Copyright 1949-2022 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. He was lulled by the specious truce with Francebut how would he feel if Captain Wickes captured a royal packet carrying the royal mails? Plainly neither side wanted to start hostilities, and they had perfected a system for avoiding a rupture. Spain had suffered less, but she was tied to France by the Bourbon Family Compact. While Spain's influence on the Revolutionary War was significant, perhaps the most profound impact was the broader American Revolution's impact on Spain. The defeat was so ugly for France that it led them to lose all the colonies in the Americas. They all hated and feared Britain as the newly dominant nation of Europe. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Somehow the wild Irishman, repeating the maneuver of the sound and sober Wickes, created an infinitely greater reaction. 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. 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. And finally Franklin played his trump card, the possibility that America might be forced back into the British Empire unless some powerful aid is given us or some strong diversion be made in our favor. He knew that the Bourbon nightmare was the picture of Britain, reunited with her American colonies, sweeping Spain from the lower Mississippi and both Bourbon powers from the Caribbean. 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. 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. On the third day of May he seized the, Conyngham was still in the Dunkirk jail, the only safe place for him. 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. Nor had Vergennes, who was extremely cool in his calculations. Masonry was powerful in France and all-powerful in Nantes, and for perhaps a generation its exporters had been sending American brothers, along with bills of lading and business papers, sheaves of French Masonic literature in exchange for similar pamphlets from the colonies. Dr. Bancroft was an old friend of Franklins from his London days. The colonies needed these things . 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. Before he left Philadelphia Franklin had written with Morris certain instructions for Captain Wickes: he was to cruise against the British in their home waters, and bring his prizes into a French port. His key man for American contacts was Paul Wentworth of New Hampshire, who before the war had been the London agent for that colony and after the war was elected a trustee of Dartmouth College, to which he had presented scientific apparatus. How did the French Alliance contribute to the American Revolution? But somehow, even when he acted in a cheap way, Silas Deane was not cheap. However, Franklin had boarded the, But now he had something serious to report: My informations says that the, 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. And so the man who believed that there never was a good war or a bad peace, old Dr. Benjamin Franklin, a man laden with the worlds honors who might easily have pleaded age and weariness, set out for France in his seventy-first year to secure these necessities for his country. It was a fine moment for his debut. Americans were at first enthusiastic in support of the revolution. No peace would be made except by the general consent. Finally the almost moribund Board of Trade and Plantations was given the assignmentwhich doubtless proved profitableof issuing permits to merchants wishing to export warlike stores. Franklin labored incessantly to get prisoners exchanged in the time-honored way, with only partial success. It could not supply Washington gunpowder in 1775 nor cope with the enlarging task of war procurement. As for the Reprisal , anchored at Lorient, she suddenly sprang a leak, and international usage allowed a ship in distress harbor privileges until she was fit to sail. Strengthen unity in the event of war with France in the west. As a weapon of war the British secret service was remarkably effective. 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. 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 annoyed to find that Bancroft was in London, making contact with the mission rather difficult. Later that year, the Franco-American army marched 700 miles south to besiege Gen. Charles Cornwallis' British army at Yorktown, while . Dubourg, said the archivist, amassed arms with the help of the brilliant new foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, who was determined to make the American rebellion a success; and Montaudoin shipped this contraband to America. The romantic era of secret aid was finished; there would be no more subsidies and loans from Versailles, and his company was already in financial straits. The arrest did much to soothe British wrath. These prospects were bleak enough in December, 1775, but Franklin sent Bonvouloir back with such a rosy report that they immediately improved. This long-range program was necessary, but it did not change the fact that the lumbering and inefficient British war machine had at last got itself oiled and repaired for a heavy assault upon the United States. Vergennes sent an agent, Achard de Bonvouloir, to Philadelphia to sound out Franklin about the prospects of a separation from England and a successful war. One of his parts was acting as confidential agent for the King, for his circumspection was as profound as Franklins. France and the American Revolution. The idling envoys to Vienna, Berlin, and Tuscany not only buzzed around Passy day after day but tried to rewrite Franklins treaties. Since the previous summer he had had the invaluable help of an unpaid deputy, William Carmichael. Franklin resolved to break through any limitations put on his mission by Congress. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. In the last months the King had relinquished his illusion that war could be avoided, and he approved his ministers memoir the day it was presented. 3. But the accident was symbolic: Hortalez & Company had suffered a. He could not punish Conyngham, who was in parts unknown, so he had William Hodge arrested and sent to the Bastille. Conyngham was still in the Dunkirk jail, the only safe place for him. Arthur was installed in the place where he could counteract Deane and that wicked old man, as R. H. Lee called Franklin. And Franklin, Voltaire, and Rousseau were linked together as the presiding geniuses of the century. The British had many other secret agents in France, and other avenues of information. It curtailed foreign trade at the moment when the country, which produced almost nothing useful in war, most needed to increase imports. The commissioners drew on it for their expenses, for the purchase of war supplies, for building three frigates in Holland and France, and for keeping up the maritime war in European waters. Franklin looked upon these fleets with the lust of a patriot whose country was in mortal danger for lack of their support. She threaded the colonies and Britain with her spies; Versailles knew much better than Whitehall how the Revolution was shaping. 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. 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. Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, his leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation in 1781. He had sent some of his baggage ahead to Florence, never dreaming that an Izard would not be received in the duchy. The fact is that Congress had little authority over the coloniesit managed to adopt the Army, but the Continental Navy was a bitter joke. But he was quite happy to spend the year of 1777 in the humbler role of itinerant trouble shooter in the French ports. George III was uneasy about both Americans because they gambled wildly in stocks and kept mistresses. For one thing, he worshiped Franklin and wanted to be useful to him; for another, he enjoyed hobnobbing with the rough sea captains he was assigned to help. Support with a donation>>. But the Amphitrite and Mercure got away in time to reach Portsmouth by April, 1777, with supplies which at last turned the tide of war and made the crucial victory of Saratoga possible. Contrary winds kept the Reprisal from entering the Loire to make the port of Nantes. The situation at home was alarming. Vergennes had patiently dissembled Frances violations of neutrality in one encounter after the other with Stormont. 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. Between them Beaumarchais and Deane amassed arms and every necessary article of clothing for an army of 30,000 men. The Declaration of Independence served as a model for the French Revolution. By the middle of July Vergennes had made up his mind to ask the King for armed intervention. Then he tried to tempt Deane with the honours and emoluments which the King would bestow on him if he brought about a reconciliation. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. Franklin had already planned his mission to France, where he would be joined by his fellow commissioners, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. Ferreiro, Larrie D. Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France & Spain Who Saved It. Franklin soon warned Congress not to enlarge its connections with this questionable pair. He gave Franklins courier a verbal message: due to Mr. Lees unflagging labors with the French embassy in London, Versailles had been persuaded to send goods worth 200,000 (Hortalez had said 25,000) to the Caribbean as an outright gift. To Vergennes, Americans were shedding their blood in order to bleed England. Johnson was captured and sent to the Old Mill, from which he soon escaped. 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. General Washington in the American Revolution. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. 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. 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. Franklin found that the American stock had lately plunged to its lowest point. For the rest of the war she ran salt to the mainland, refused to privateer against the Americans, and built for them her superb sloops. 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. 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. The prize crew of five Americans and sixteen Frenchmen were put in prison, and the prize master was forced to confess that Conyngham had made other captures. William Lee opened the campaign against Deane in a letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee. Franklin was now seventy, afflicted with gout, and wretchedly tired from his labors in Congress and its candle-burning committees. When he arrived at Nantes Penet kept him drunk and hostile to the Paris commissioners. Vergennes had answered, Nous ne d sirons pas la guerre, mais nous ne la craignons pas. In sending on this encouraging word to Congress, Franklin added his own hopes about the Franco-British war: When all are ready for it, a small matter may suddenly bring it on.. Every step in preparing the lugger for a cruise was watched by the British in Dunkirk. The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. Though he knew that affairs at Nantes were in a frightful state, William Lee lingered in Paris until August to confer with his brother about rearranging American foreign affairs to enhance the family glory. 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. A.) And Franklin, Voltaire, and Rousseau were linked together as the presiding geniuses of the century. Franklins household, the unofficial American embassy, was never lonely, even when Benny was sent off to school. Soon Franklin and Deane had a group of young men busy in the various ports, helping merchantmen and privateers speed on their way, informing them of shifts in French regulations and dangerous areas patrolled by British warships, recruiting French seamen to fill out depleted ships companies, finding masters for ships and ships for masters. He was a smaller copy of Robert Morris and aspired to become a great international merchant like his friend. As such is their miserable policy, it is our business to force on a war for which purpose I see nothing so likely as fitting our privateers from the ports and islands of France. Then he captured the Kings packet, England registered the expected sense of outrage; the whole country seethed with the news. What was the main purpose of the Stamp Act Congress? From May, 1777, to May, 1778, Congress would receive no direct word from its mission in Paris. The Passy household was complete when the wise and enchanting Edward Bancroft arrived to act as general secretary of the mission. (We must remember that all this was happening before Lexington.). 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). These were led by Libertadores - like Simn . Stormont subsided; England needed time too. Stamp Act of 1765. It caused many French nobles and clergy to move to the newly independent United States. After that opening wedge, which tacitly killed the embargo, Franklins resolution for world trade was bound to go through. Franklin remembered the bitter crisis of the summer when Louis XVI had agreed to armed intervention and then had capitulated to his uncle. It began with the bold request that France sell the United States eight ships of the line, completely manned . 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. British Debt. Since Wentworth often slipped across to Paris, much of Bancrofts information could be delivered verbally, but he made a weekly report in writing. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. The Sugar Act, was made to try and stop the smuggling of sugar and molasses. 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. He was evidently buying arms and setting up a smuggling base in the Low Countries. By early 1775 the British embassy in France estimated that war supplies worth 32,000,000 livres (about $6,000,000) had been shipped from that kingdom to the colonies. 1. He was free for a time to be the scientist, finding in nature a fidelity to laws beyond the reach of human meddling. The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. On Christmas Day Washington wrote Congress: Our want of powder is inconceivable. Three weeks later there was not a pound in his magazines. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a nightmare figure. The Stamp Act riots were noisy on the land, but the seas were quiet and busy. At last America would hear of the third Lee brother, hitherto a cipher, as its savior in Europe. Knowing George III as he did, Franklin realized the importance of insulting him while all Europe looked on. He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. Americas first decisive victory held the promise of the final one at Yorktown. Meanwhile, Grard warned, the negotiations must be kept secret. The requested battleships were not forthcoming; it was explained that France needed every unit of her Navy for her own purposes, which of course meant her expected war with Britain. His Reprisal , a full-rigged ship in an age of sloops and brigs, flew under the strong westerlies and completed the voyage in five weeks. 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. That night boats brought his cannon and powder and a number of French seamen, and the Dunkirk Pirate was on his way. He waited until the, Beaumarchais was with the three commissioners when the official messenger arrived. Vergennes was so disheartened by the bad news which had arrived even before these disasters were known, and he so much dreaded a sudden declaration of war by Britain, that in August he formally closed the ports of France to American privateers and their prizes. Robert Morris had arranged Toms appointment under the delusion that the youth had reformed during a long stay abroad and was to be trusted with the public business. 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. The port records were similarly camouflaged. For diplomatic reasons, he always pretended a vast ignorance of Hortalez & Companya feat like hiding an elephant in a hat. Congress was shipping them tobacco, furs, and other valuable products to buy war supplies and ships, but Tom Morris and Penet claimed every cargo arriving in France. Once he was installed as sole envoy in Paris, I should have it in my power to call those to account, through whose hands I know the public money has passed, and which will either never be accounted for, or misaccounted for, by connivance between those, who are to share in the public plunder. This was interesting; evidently the expected overture from England was at hand. 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. He could not urge France into the war without Spanish support and without patriot victories to insure the survival of the young nation across the Atlantic. 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. 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. The Franco-American alliance was the 1778 alliance between the Kingdom of France and the United States during the American Revolutionary War.Formalized in the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, it was a military pact in which the French provided many supplies for the Americans.The Netherlands and Spain later joined as allies of France; Britain had no European allies. A growing fleet of American privateers had already brought prizes into the various French ports, and a system had been perfected for their disposal. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787. Vergennes was alarmed. So too was our want of guns, supplies, and everything needed in a war against one of the major powers of the earth. 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. To license content, please contact licenses [at] americanheritage.com. Therefore, by the time the American Revolution broke out in 1775, the young French King Louis XVI was eager to use this conflict to . Apprehensive as he was about Britain, Vergennes risked war to release Captain Wickes and Captain Henry Johnson, who had sailed in company with him on the Irish cruise, from their long protective arrest in port. 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. His discretion was fathomless, and he may purposely have avoided emphasizing his old friendship with the man who carried out some of the ministrys most secret work for America. The southern states were crammed with tobacco, which could not even be sent up along the coast because of the British cruisers on patrol. 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 Franklin and Deane knew what to expect from Arthur Lee. Like the first conflict of that name, it was a period of intermittent warfare and political and economic rivalry between the two powers. The capture of the Bastille ignited one of the greatest social upheavals in Western . The fight for American independence piqued the interest of Europe's most powerful colonial powers. In the kindest of letters, Gardoqui explained the situation to the approaching envoy and suggested a meeting on the French side of the border. 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. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. The campaign against Franklin, the father of mischief, took longer because, as Izard confessed in a letter to the president of Congress, Henry Laurens, it was extremely difficult to find any proofs of his crimes.

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