How the French Saved America

by Tom Shachtman

  For ten days after the initial Gérard session, Franklin, thinking that Vergennes was in a hurry, slowed down. He was too busy to look at documents. He was temporarily indisposed. But Vergennes was not in a hurry; on the contrary, he needed time to work out provisions to which the Americans could most readily agree. He had in hand the Adams-crafted model treaty; that document contained some passages that he did not like, but insofar as possible he adopted its language. The commercial treaty’s guiding principle, “the most perfect Equality and Reciprocity” between the partners, was stated in its preamble. Each granted the other the status of most favored nation. The military one permitted the United States to keep Canada, other portions of North America, and Bermuda, should they be captured during the war, and permitted France to retain any Caribbean isles won in combat—Adams’s draft said nothing of such matters. In the most important clause, France agreed not to end any war with Great Britain until American independence had been assured.

  That Vergennes had guessed right about the acceptability of the provisions became clear when negotiations resumed on January 18. They thereafter went smoothly, more so for Franklin and Deane than for Lee, who remained unable to quell his suspicion of everything French. Lee contributed to the treaty in regard to its legal implications, and when he would not sign particular provisions, Franklin, desirous of a united front, requested that Vergennes drop them, which he did.

  Stormont, looking for clues as to what was going on between the French and the Americans, concluded that all the signals were bad. He found Vergennes uncharacteristically hurrying him out of the office, and Maurepas claiming illness as a reason not to see him. He tried another way of pressuring Maurepas, through Nathaniel Parker Forth. A year earlier Forth, a stockbroker and longtime Paris resident, had met and intrigued Maurepas, to the point of Maurepas asking Stormont to have Forth named a special envoy. Forth soon produced a coup, persuading Maurepas to countersign a memo promising that neither France nor Great Britain would build more battleships. Vergennes blocked it by telling Stormont that such an agreement was invalid as it lacked the royal signature. Forth was accepted at Louis’s summer residence at Fontainebleau, and during a hunt killed a boar with his leaded riding crop, for which he was much celebrated.

  Early in January 1778 Forth, in a contentious meeting, taunted Maurepas, saying that if he sincerely wanted peace between Great Britain and France he would push Louis to expel Franklin and Deane. Maurepas asked in return what George III would give France if they did so. When Forth was evasive, Maurepas exploded that “if France were mad enough, I say assez folle, to make any agreement with [the Americans], that England would not à aucun prix [at any price] make it up [with them] and they both fall upon us.… Time will shew, and prove that we had more reason to fear you than you to fear us.” Maurepas challenged Forth to go to England and learn what George III would do for France should France break off with the Americans, and he pledged to sound out Louis on the matter. Forth went to London but was unable to obtain a price for French cooperation. By the time he returned to Paris, Maurepas would no longer see him.

  Hutton sent Franklin a thank-you note and a query as to whether anything could now be done to forestall a Franco-American pact. Franklin had not received the query when he wrote to Hutton, charging that Great Britain had “lost the esteem, respect, friendship and affection of all the great and growing people, who consider [the British] at present, and whose posterity will consider you, as the worst and wickedest nation upon earth.” When Hutton’s note arrived, Franklin went further:

  I abominate with you all Murder, and I may add the slaughter of men in an unjust cause is nothing less than Murder; I therefore, never think of your present Ministers and Abettors, but with the Image, strongly painted in my View of their Hands red, wet, and dripping with the Blood of my Countrymen, Friends, and Relations. No peace can be signed by those hands.

  On February 4 Vergennes received definitive word from Montmorin, ambassador to Carlos III, that Spain would not sign at present but wanted to reserve the right to do so later, and pledged to continue clandestine funding for America. Receiving this news, Louis XVI had no further excuse for delay.

  The signing ceremony took place on February 6, 1778, in the Foreign Ministry’s office in Paris, with Gérard doing the honors for France. Lee and Deane wore their finest suits. Franklin had on an old brown velvet Manchester. When Deane asked why he had worn that particular garment Franklin responded, “To give it a little revenge,” explaining that he had worn it on January 29, 1774, when at a British Privy Council meeting he had been verbally attacked and abused in front of King George III. Lee wanted to sign each document twice, claiming that Congress had appointed him a commissioner both for Spain and France. Franklin, Deane, and Gérard limited Lee to a single signature, although he added to it, “Deputy Plenipotentiary for France and Spain.”

  Franklin and Deane wrote Congress a note to accompany the documents. The first pact, based on the model treaty, was one of “Amity and Commerce.” The second, to be kept secret for the time being, was even more important:

  a Treaty of Alliance, in which it is stipulated that in Case England declares war against France or occasions a War by Attempts to hinder her Commerce with us, we should then make common Cause of it.… The great aim of the [second] Treaty is declared to be, to “establish the Liberty, Sovereignty, and Independency absolute and unlimited of the United States as well as in Matters of Government as Commerce.” And this is guaranteed to us by France together with all the Countries we possess, or shall possess at the Conclusion of the War.

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  “When an Enemy think a design against them improbable they can always be Surprised.” —John Paul Jones

  As 1777 yielded to 1778, General Howe’s British force continued to occupy Philadelphia, while the main body of the Continental army wintered at Valley Forge in considerably less comfort, and with no assurance of any progress being made in Paris toward a Franco-American alliance. Nothing furthers the growth of conspiratorial thinking more than a stalemate; and these spurred the congressional anti-Washington forces to intensify efforts to supplant him as America’s military leader. The plotters tried two ploys. One was to offer to Lafayette, through the Board of War, and without consulting Washington, command of an expedition to conquer Canada with Conway as its military leader. The second was to send to Henry Laurens, the president of Congress, an anonymous compilation of anti-Washington charges, “Thoughts of a Freeman,” which congressional rules would force him to read aloud to the members and solicit comments, thereby providing them with a way to express their dissatisfaction with the commander in chief.

  Instead of craftiness, the plotters by these moves displayed their ineptness, for they misjudged the willingness of Lafayette and Laurens to become dupes.

  Lafayette was indeed intrigued by the prospect of using his influence on the French-speaking Canadians and his military prowess on the British army in Canada, and he had been an admirer of Conway. But his fondness for Conway had already faded as a result of having naively praised him to Washington prior to learning of the chief’s anger over Conway’s “weak leader” letter. The marquis had since apologized to Washington and been forgiven for the lapse, but it made him adamantly opposed to any expedition that did not have Washington’s express approval. Moreover, as he wrote to Washington, “They will laugh in France when they’l hear that [Conway] is choosen upon such a commission out of the same army where I am principally as he is an Irishman, and when the project should be to show to the Frenchmen of [Canada] a man of theyr nation, who by his rank in France could inspire them with some confidence.”

  Lafayette sensed that the government of France was paying attention to the reported activities of its officers currently serving in America; and even as his letter crossed the Atlantic, lists of those officers and their billets in America were being compiled by the French for their military and diplomatic archives.

  The Board of War, led by Horatio Gates and Thomas Miffl
in, reacted to Lafayette’s objection to the expedition by offering to have him lead it with Conway as the second—Conway had already been sent to Albany to prepare. Lafayette again demurred. He proposed, as an alternate second, de Kalb, a “wise … good officer … not over-powered by the clamours of an unbounded ambition.” Conway would be his third. Further, should Washington not consent to the expedition or should Lafayette’s conditions not be met, he would resign and return home, and he was certain the other French officers in America would do the same “within two days.” The Board of War then fully agreed to Lafayette’s terms.

  On opening the “Thoughts of a Freeman” letter, Laurens saw that it was unsigned, which gave him a way around the congressional rule; since the letter was anonymous, he refused to read it to the members and said he planned to throw it into the fire. Instead he forwarded the letter to Washington inside a note to his son John. Washington, thus alerted as to the precise shortcomings with which his detractors sought to tar him, was able to prepare thoroughly for the visit of a congressional delegation to Valley Forge. At his request Hamilton compiled, from reports by officers and copies of Washington’s missives, fifteen thousand words on the inadequacies of the supply system, lack of cooperation from state governments, and congressional inaction on troop pay.

  The visiting committee consisted of Washington doubters, including its chairman, the Massachusetts delegate Francis Dana, a lawyer who had been a Sons of Liberty leader in the 1760s. None of the visitors to Valley Forge had had any idea of the appalling hardships that the troops were enduring. After Washington awed Dana by acquainting him with those conditions, he flattered him with an invitation to dine and spend the night at the commander’s lodgings, and then in a late-night meeting frightened him, saying, “Mr. Dana—Congress does not trust me. I cannot continue thus.” Dana sputtered that most delegates considered Washington indispensable. Upon returning to Congress, Dana became a vocal Washington supporter and converted enough other delegates to that position to assure the commander in chief’s continued control of the army.

  Meanwhile Lafayette was en route to Albany with a French posse—Duportail, du Plessis, de Kalb, and more than a dozen other French officers. After arriving, dismayed by the lack of supplies and men and by the fierceness of a winter that prevented travel into Canada, Lafayette realized what the Gates-Mifflin plan was: for Washington’s protégé to fail on this expedition and slink back to France, providing the plotters with an additional impugning of Washington’s leadership. Lafayette immediately petitioned Congress and the Board of War to abort the Canada mission.

  The impasse took time to resolve, and in the interim he interested himself in Native American matters. He commissioned Jean-Baptiste Gouvion, one of Duportail’s engineers, to design and erect a fort for the Oneida and Tuscarora.

  During one of Lafayette’s absences, Conway tried to assume command, and de Kalb, whose promotion Conway had tried to block, beat back the attempt. De Kalb described the incident to de Broglie, asserting that in the confrontation with Conway he had maintained his position “with more warmth and obstinacy than I should have done against any other on another occasion.”

  The Canada invasion was called off, and Lafayette and de Kalb were directed to return to Valley Forge. As Lafayette wrote to Washington while en route, just as Congress had deemed his and de Kalb’s presence at Valley Forge absolutely necessary, “I believe that of General Conway is absolutely necessary to Albany, and he has receiv’d orders to stay there, what I have no objection to as nothing perhaps will be done in this quarter but some disputes of indians and torys.”

  * * *

  While Conway’s fortunes had rapidly risen and fallen, so had those of his brother-in-law. Du Bouchet, a hero of the Saratoga campaign, was afterward taken ill and given permission to return to France. In January 1778 he embarked from Baltimore, bound for Haiti. Not far off the coast the British intercepted his ship; upon their discovery that he was a French officer he was arrested and transported to one of the worst prisons in America, the Judith, a ship afloat in New York Harbor. He and the other prisoners were considered traitors and treated accordingly. Aboard a crowded hellhole, they were frequently deprived of water and food, and du Bouchet thought he would surely die. Between 1776 and 1783 some eleven thousand prisoners did die on those ships, which were run by the vengeful Irish-born Tory William Cunningham. After three weeks aboard the Judith, du Bouchet and two compatriots feigned having so severe a communicable illness as to require their being segregated from the rest of the prison population for fear of contagion. In the middle of the night, from that more isolated area they made their way off the ship and into a tied-up rowboat. Setting out on the East River they almost miraculously happened upon a French cargo ship bound for Saint-Domingue that agreed to take them aboard. From Haiti they were able to obtain berths on a ship heading to France.

  * * *

  In late February of 1778, the Belle Poule was forced back to port again by bad weather. Silas Deane, upon being apprised of the news, hurried with it to Versailles, where he applied to Vergennes to provide a different, speedy French ship to now take the actual treaties to America before North’s peace commission could arrive there. Vergennes agreed. He was still worried about the actions of the British, principally because of an apparent news item from London that George Washington had signed a peace treaty. Franklin assured him that this was fake news, among other reasons because “No Treaty would be entered into with Howe by Washington, when Congress was at hand.”

  Arthur Lee objected to Deane’s hasty transaction with the foreign minister; but then Lee had been fulminating over nearly everything that Deane and Franklin did or failed to do, even after the treaties were signed. His unrelenting nastiness occasioned a tough letter from Franklin:

  It was near nine at Night when the News [of the Belle Poule] arriv’d; and Mr. Deane set out immediately. If we could have imagin’d it necessary to have a Consultation with you on so plain a Case, it would necessarily have occasion’d a Delay of that important Business till the next Day.… We think Mr. Deane deserves your Thanks, and that neither of us deserve your Censure.

  In the wake of the treaty signing, France canceled all leave for naval personnel and stepped up repairs and shipbuilding. Contingents of soldiers were marched to camps in Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, the camps deliberately visible to stoke British fears of an invasion and to spur the reserving in British home waters of a portion of their navy to guard against that possibility. The American commissioners also made aggressive plans: for Captain John Paul Jones, thirty, to raid the British coast in his sloop, Ranger. One objective was for Jones to seize British combatants so they could be exchanged for Americans sailors being held in terrible conditions in British home islands jails—for just as in America du Bouchet and others were being treated abominably on the Judith and other prisons because they were presumed to be traitors, so American sailors in British jails were being miserably treated because they were considered pirates.

  Born in Scotland, a son of the Paul family, John Paul had added the Jones name and come to America only after killing a mutinous sailor during an attempted takeover of a ship. Among the earliest officers to join the Continental navy, he complained of non-advancement until, in mid-1777, his big opportunity arrived: command of the twenty-gun Ranger, with orders to sail into European waters. Finding it ungainly, he reduced its cannon to eighteen, added tons of lead to the ballast to shift its center of gravity, and reconfigured its masts and sails. At Passy he may have begun an affair with Mme. Chaumont as well as made business arrangements with her husband for the sale of expected prizes. The supposed affair with Mme. Chaumont burnished his reputation among Parisians as dashing and reckless.

  Jones learned from Franklin that the ship he had next expected to command, L’Indien, a forty-gun frigate being built by the commissioners in Holland, would not be his because the commissioners had postponed its completion during the delicate treaty negotiations with France. But they were ea
ger to use the Ranger for raids on Jones’s terms. He had written to them, “When an Enemy think a design against them improbable they can always be Surprised and Attacked with Advantage.” Whereas in regard to Wickes and Conyngham the commissioners had been cautious, needing to prevent actions that would unduly provoke France to protect its fragile peace with Great Britain, now that the Franco-American alliance had been sealed they gave considerable latitude to Jones: “Proceed with [the Ranger] in the manner you shall judge best, for distressing the Enemies of the United States.”