“Yes, sir,” replied Austin.
Franklin’s great head drooped. With a sigh he clasped his hands and turned away, obviously crushed by the official confirmation of the news he had dreaded to hear. He had taken perhaps two steps toward the house when young Austin spoke again.
“But, sir, I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war!”
The news was, in Silas Deane’s words, “like a sovereign cordial to the dying.” Franklin rushed Austin into the house and with shaking hands ripped his dispatches from his bags. Beaumarchais leaped into his carriage and thundered away toward Paris to spread the news. He declined to slow down for a curve in the road and found himself head over heels in the ditch. For the next few days he spread the news with his arm in a sling. Undoubtedly, he made a great deal of one aspect of Burgoyne’s defeat, which must have also delighted Franklin and Deane. Many of the guns and much of the ammunition on the American side at the battle of Saratoga had come from the hold of the Amphitrite, a Beaumarchais ship that had broken through the British blockade and unloaded her deadly cargo at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
At Passy, Franklin and his fellow commissioners worked day and night preparing dispatches spreading the official news to other European countries that Burgoyne was a captive and the British offensive shattered. The most important communication went to Count de Vergennes at Versailles.
In two days they had an encouraging answer. Monsieur Gerard, undersecretary for foreign affairs, paid the envoys a personal call to convey Vergennes’ congratulations. More important, the undersecretary said that the Count thought the time was ripe for the envoys to renew their proposals for an alliance. Franklin prepared the document, had it signed and approved by his fellow envoys, and sent Temple Franklin rushing to Versailles with it. He came dashing back breathlessly to repeat Vergennes’ words: “In two days an answer shall be sent to you and you will see how much disposed I am to serve the cause of America.” That night at dinner, George Grand, brother of their French banker, Ferdinand Grand, told Franklin that the foreign minister had spoken of the envoys as “our friends” instead of “your friends,” the diplomatic subterfuge he had used in the past.
Four days later Franklin, Deane, and Lee played the Secret Service game of changing carriages and sneaking out back doors to meet Vergennes and Gerard in a house a half-mile outside of Versailles. There, the cresting wave on which they seemed to be riding to victory suddenly began to falter. Vergennes was still playing a cautious game. He discussed in detail the possible treaty that France might make with the Americans. But then he coolly announced that it was impossible to sign it unless Spain concurred. The King of Spain was a Bourbon uncle of Louis XVI of France. Their “family compact” forbade them to enter into wars or alliances without mutual approval.
Franklin instantly saw that this could, and probably would, lead to some serious foot-dragging. He had already sent Arthur Lee to Spain in an attempt to bring her over to the American side and the Spanish had been so lukewarm they declined even to let Lee into the country. He had conducted a series of fruitless conferences with the Spanish foreign minister in a border town.
But there was a way of building a fire under the French and Franklin had already taken the first steps to convert George III into his carrier of wood. The news of Burgoyne’s disaster sent a wave of hysteria churning through the British ministry. Lord North persuaded a reluctant George III that the time had come to offer massive conciliation to the Americans to head off a French alliance. Secret agent Paul Wentworth now was sent hustling to Paris to find Franklin and Deane and talk about the possibility of a truce.
Franklin let Deane smoke out the British offer. The French police and Vergennes’ secret agents, of course, knew precisely what Wentworth’s mission was. The mere fact that Deane had agreed to see the British spy threw them into a panic. Gerard rushed to Deane even before he met Wentworth and told him that the French had decided not to wait for word from Spain. They were ready to give the United States formal recognition if they promised not to conclude a separate peace with England. Meanwhile, Franklin himself played the war-of-nerves game with Vergennes, turning over to the French minister a letter from London asking him if the Americans would accept something “a little short of absolute independency.” At dinner, Wentworth found Deane, carefully rehearsed by Franklin, performing like a master diplomat. The discouraged Wentworth reported to his Secret Service chief in England that Deane was “vain, desultory and subtle” and utterly uninterested in the “honours and emoluments” which he dangled in front of him if he became a “cooperative peacemaker.”
On December 31, the news Franklin had feared finally arrived from Spain. King Charles III was not inclined to fight for American independence at present. Five more days passed with nothing but silence from Versailles. Franklin decided it was time to raise the pressure on Vergennes to the maximum level. After three weeks of dodging dinner invitations from Wentworth, he suddenly agreed to an interview, with Deane present as a witness. In advance Franklin laid down one stern requirement. There was to be no talk of “rewards or emoluments.”
On January 6, 1778, the master spy spent two hours with Franklin. He tried flattery, argument, persuasion, and appeals to history. He urged Franklin to forget his private resentments and help make Britain and America “the greatest empire on earth.” Franklin’s reply was independence or nothing. Wentworth produced an unsigned letter from William Eden, his Secret Service boss, declaring that Britain was ready to fight for another ten years rather than grant America independence.
“America,” Franklin snapped, “is ready to fight fifty years to win it.”
The rest of the letter, full of conciliatory sentiments, Franklin found sensible enough. Knowing that Wentworth would report the interview to his royal superiors, Franklin could not resist a dig at Lord North and George III. He was glad, he said, “to find honour and zeal so near the throne.” Here and throughout the interview, Wentworth was baffled to find Franklin dodging every proposition he offered him. “I never knew him to be so eccentric,” reported the harassed spy.
The next day, a baffled Wentworth went back to London, and Franklin added one final touch to his scenario. He simply neglected to report to Vergennes that he had seen the spy. The jittery foreign minister, remembering how faithfully Franklin had reported previous British overtures, convened the French Council of Ministers and warned them that England was clearly upping the ante and it was time for France to act. The Council instantly voted for an alliance.
The next day, the commissioners were asked to gather at Deane’s lodgings in Paris for a conference with Gerard. Nervously Gerard asked them, “What is necessary to be done to give such satisfaction to the American commissioners as to engage them not to listen to any propositions from England for a new connection with that country?”
After a brief conference with his fellow commissioners Franklin wrote out a formal answer. “The commissioners have long since proposed a treaty of amity and commerce which is not yet concluded. The immediate conclusion of that treaty will remove the uncertainty they are under with regard to it and give them such a reliance on the friendship of France as to reject firmly all propositions made to them of peace from England which have not for their basis the entire freedom and independence of America, both in matters of government and commerce.”
Solemnly Gerard read the answer, and then informed the commissioners that the Council of Ministers had confirmed the alliance and King Louis XVI had given his personal pledge to sign the treaty, no matter what his Spanish uncle thought of it. Benjamin Franklin had proved himself the equal if not the superior of the best diplomats in Europe.
One final touch remained. On February 5, the details of the treaty were finally worked out and Franklin and his fellow envoys were invited to the office of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for a formal signing. Edward Bancroft noticed that Franklin dressed for the occasion in a suit of Manchester velvet which was vaguely famil
iar. Just as they were about to depart for the signing, they received word from Undersecretary Gerard that he was ill with a heavy cold and would prefer to postpone the ceremony until the following day. The Americans, of course, complied and the next day Bancroft noticed that Franklin was wearing the same suit once more. Then he remembered where he had seen it, it was the outfit Franklin had worn when Solicitor General Wedderburn had humiliated him before the Lords in Council at the Cockpit. Bancroft remarked on the coincidence to Silas Deane, and the Yankee trader asked Franklin why he was wearing it. Franklin smiled and said: “To give it a little revenge.”
The Treaty of Alliance meant almost certain war between England and France. But Franklin, with his triple-decker mind, was already thinking about peace. The chief obstacle, in his view, was the ministry of yes-men around George III. Get rid of them, he reasoned, and there was a good possibility that he and his numerous friends in the opposition might be able to work out a settlement based on free trade and American independence. So he boldly began playing British politics once more. Using Edward Bancroft as his emissary, Franklin got word to his old friend of the Grand Ohio days, banker Thomas Walpole, that the treaty with France was signed, and he urged him to make the best possible use of the news. On December 23, 1777, Walpole had told Franklin that he had been having conversations with Lord Chatham and was “certain he would concede everything necessary for the security of America and begin the business at the right end as you may judge for a cessation of arms & recalling the troops. He & Lord Camden desire their best compliments to you. . . .” Walpole leaked the news of the treaty to Charles James Fox, the most explosive member of the Opposition and a Parliamentary debater of rare talent.
When the House of Commons convened on February 17, 1778, Lord North promptly introduced conciliatory acts which granted America the terms Franklin had suggested two short years before in his negotiations with Lord Howe, the repeal of all the obnoxious legislation back to 1763, the recognition of the Continental Congress, and the virtual independence of America, within the framework of the empire. Fox allowed North to pose as a peacemaker for the better part of two hours. He even remained silent when the Prime Minister declared his concessions “were from reason and propriety, not from necessity.” Fox then arose and ironically congratulated Lord North for joining the opposition. Then, like the expert verbal duelist that he was, he pinned the First Minister to his bench by asking whether America had signed a treaty with France within the last ten days.
Waspish Horace Walpole, who may have been let in on the secret by his cousin Thomas, described the ensuing scene in his diary. “Lord North was thunderstruck and would not rise.... Burke called on his Lordship to answer to the fact of the treaty. Still the Minister was silent, till Sir G. Saville rose and told him that it would be criminal to withhold a reply, and a matter of impeachment, and ended with crying, ‘An answer! An answer! An answer!’ Lord North, thus forced up, owned he had heard a report of the treaty, but desired to give no answer to the house at that moment. . . Such evasive answers rather convinced everybody of the truth of the report.” In fact, a copy of the treaty (courtesy of Edward Bancroft) was on North’s desk at that moment. But to have admitted it would have also meant admitting that his conciliatory proposals were not inspired by “reason and propriety” but frantic necessity.
Franklin was obviously hoping to make a fool out of North in the House of Commons and bring down the ministry. How close he came was evident from the Secret Service reports which Beaumarchais sent Vergennes from his agents in England. At the end of February, Beaumarchais was predicting, “Within a week Lord Chatham will be entrusted with affairs and Lord North dismissed.” North himself revealed his desperation by begging the King to let him resign. “The anxiety of his mind for the last two months has deprived Lord North of his memory and understanding,” he told his royal master. Meanwhile, he was sending relays of negotiators to Franklin in a last hysterical try to appease the man he and his friends had insulted and humiliated.
First came a Moravian churchman, James Hutton, an old neighbor from Craven Street. Then Franklin’s Parliamentary correspondent, David Hartley, and then another member of Parliament, William Pulteney. What Franklin told them was not likely to restore Lord North’s memory and understanding. He reiterated that independence was non-negotiable. To Hutton he suggested that if England wanted to regain America’s good will, she might throw in Canada, Nova Scotia, and Florida in the treaty of peace. To Hartley, he wrote, “Whenever you shall be disposed to make peace upon equal and reasonable terms, you will find little difficulty, if you get first an honest ministry. The present have all along acted so deceitfully and treacherously as well as inhumanly toward the Americans, that I imagine, the absolute want of all confidence in them, will make a treaty at present, between them and the Congress impracticable.” Pulteney, operating like a secret agent under an assumed name, made the mistake of telling Franklin that he came in a semi-official capacity and was prepared to offer peace terms. Franklin instantly showed him the door. To have said another word to him would have violated the treaty with France, in spirit if not in fact. Franklin then immediately informed Vergennes of North’s approach.
Pressing what he thought was an advantage, Franklin now took the offensive and dispatched Jonathan Loring Austin to England, where he became a semi-permanent boarder with Lord Shelburne and attended Parliament as a guest of the Opposition, dined regularly in public with them, and thus made it clear that Franklin was as willing to do business with the Opposition as he was loath to negotiate with Lord North. He was, in effect, telling Parliament: If you want peace, get rid of North and his toadies. It was nothing less than a peace offensive, with Franklin simultaneously working all his avenues to the seat of power. On February 26, he wrote David Hartley, “I am of opinion, that if wise and honest men, such as Sir George Saville, the Bishop of St. Asaph, and yourself were to come over here immediately with powers to treat, you might not only obtain peace with America, but prevent a war with France.”
Pitting himself so boldly against the men in control of the most powerful nation in the world was not without its dangers. At one point, Hartley, during these tense weeks, sent Franklin a nervous message that he was in danger of being assassinated. This was certainly not beyond the power of the British Secret Service or beneath their ethics. More and more, George III was coming to view the entire war as a contest between himself and Benjamin Franklin. When a King acquires such a fixation, there are always a few dutiful servants in the wings, eager to relieve His Majesty of his tormentor. But Franklin refused to scare. Instead of blustering defiance, he sent Hartley a reply which may well have given the British second thoughts: “I thank you for your kind caution, but having nearly finished a long life, I set but little value on what remains of it.... Perhaps the best use such an old fellow can be put to is to make a martyr of him.”
But George III was a very stubborn man. Although he was fundamentally obtuse, there was a streak of cunning in his nature that enabled him to control more gifted men. Late in 1777, he had taken the precaution of purchasing Lord North by giving him 20,000 pounds to settle his debts. This made the pliant First Minister his political slave, unable to resign in the face of total disaster. With a similar use of royal funds and favors, the King kept his grip on the majority in Parliament, in spite of fulminations from the Franklin favored Opposition. The closest they came to victory was on a budgetary vote early in March which the ministry carried by only six votes in a House of 288. Horace Walpole, watching the King’s blunders from the sidelines, became so agitated that he gasped: “Unless sudden inspiration should seize the whole island of Britain and make it with one voice invite Dr. Franklin to come over and new model the government, it will crumble away in the hands that still hold it.” But neither so extravagant a summons nor any other kind of serious gesture was made by George III or his ministers to avert the inevitable confrontation.
It came on March 20, 1778, when King Louis XVI formally received Frankl
in and his fellow envoys at Versailles. A week before, Vergennes had notified Ambassador Stormont of the existence of the treaty, and the French Ambassador in London had handed a similar not to the British foreign secretary. But the King’s personal reception was the ultimate stamp of approval, and Franklin was deeply aware of the momentous nature of the day. The admittedly small hope he had entertained for a manipulated peace was gone. Calmly he resumed the role he had played so well during his first months in France – the symbol of republican simplicity. For the visit to Versailles, he carried this performance to the level of consummate daring by choosing to appear before the King without a wig, sans sword or any other accouterment but a simple brown suit, spotless white stockings and plain shoes with silver buckles. It is hard for us to realize that this was daring – but the dress at the court of Versailles was as carefully regulated as all the other bits of etiquette that surrounded the King. There were even prescribed styles for each season. It was not at all unusual for the royal chamberlain to bar those who were out of costume.
As his carriage rolled in the immense courtyard of Versailles, Franklin must have felt a surge of contradictory emotions. He was about to pledge America’s faith to a nation that he had been born to suspect and even hate. For weeks, in letters and in person, his English friends had been warning him not to make the mistake of trusting France. The game had been played to bring down the North ministry, the numerous remarks he had made about the inadvisability of a virgin state suitoring for alliances, were further indications of the deep reluctance he had to overcome within himself before achieving this diplomatic triumph. Only a few weeks before he had told David Hartley that America was “a virtuous daughter . . . forc’d and driven into the arms of France.” Now those arms were about to officially embrace her. Perhaps there was in Franklin’s bold choice of costumer an unspoken compromise with these uneasy echoes in his mind. It was a way of announcing to the French in the most subtle and yet declaratory terms that America was independent and meant to stay that way.
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