How the French Saved America

by Tom Shachtman

  Anchored at Quiberon Bay, near a French squadron commanded by Admiral Toussaint Guillaume La Motte-Picquet, Jones sent a message that the Ranger was prepared to render a thirteen-gun salute if he would reciprocate. The Frenchman was willing to answer only with nine; Jones objected until informed that nine was the number used to salute high-ranked dignitaries of republics. The resultant salute was the first officially given in Europe to the flag of the United States of America. While continuing to prepare, Jones struck up a friendship with an even more senior admiral, Louis Gouillette, Comte d’Orvilliers, sixty-nine, who on learning of Jones’s raiding plans offered the support and experienced military guidance that Jones had been unable to obtain in America. Jones also discussed with him a grandiose pipe dream: for French and American vessels to cross to New York, destroy Lord Howe’s squadron, and then do the same with Britain’s Newfoundland fisheries fleet.

  The only men not happy with Jones’s plans for raiding Britain were his officers and sailors. One American officer tried to decline to sail by contending that regulations forbade an officer of his rank from serving in a ship with fewer than twenty guns. Such excuses were a cover for the men wanting the Ranger to function more as a privateer, taking prizes in whose sale they could share, than as a warship of the Continental navy on a mission to wreak havoc.

  * * *

  On March 4, as Deane was preparing for the signal honor of being presented at court to Louis XVI, he was stunned to receive a letter from Congress recalling him. The missive gave no reason for this recall other than so that Deane could personally brief Congress on European affairs. Franklin, also puzzled by the recall, tried to assure Deane that Congress would return him to Paris by the fall to continue working out the treaty’s commercial details, since Deane was America’s most experienced commercial negotiator. Franklin, Deane, Carmichael, Bancroft, and Beaumarchais all presumed that Lee’s complaints had spurred the recall. Vergennes and Gérard worried that it might portend a rejection of the Franco-American pacts by a recalcitrant Congress unduly influenced by Francophobes.

  * * *

  On March 8, British cabinet officer Lord Germain wrote to General Clinton, quoting the “king’s secret instructions” for the following summer in America: “If you shall find it impracticable to bring Gen Washington to a general + decisive Action early in the Campaign, you will relinquish the Idea of carrying on offensive operations within land.” The Franco-American pact had not yet become known in London but Great Britain, assuming that there would be such an agreement, instructed Clinton to disperse some of the troops then in New York to territories more at risk from France, namely Canada, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas. On March 10 the Admiralty also ordered its ships to seize any vessels thought to be heading to American shores even if they were escorted by foreign warships, including those of France.

  On March 13, some five weeks after the Franco-American alliance treaties had been signed in Paris, Ambassador Noailles in London presented a copy of the commercial alliance to the Court of St James’s. That evening the British summoned Stormont from Paris. Shortly thereafter Noailles was ordered home. News of the Franco-American pact produced a huge shift in British public opinion regarding the American Revolution, encapsulated in a newspaper headline of what was now desired: WAR WITH FRANCE AND PEACE WITH AMERICA. On March 17 Great Britain declared war on France, and in London on March 20, during the most martial parts of an extra performance of Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, ordered by King George III, the audience clapped heartily, “filled with a true spirit of indignation and resentment against our natural, and insidious enemy.”

  That same day at Versailles the American commissioners were formally presented to Louis XVI. Lee and Deane wore rented ceremonial swords to go with their powdered wigs and finery. Franklin, having deemed his wig ill fitting, did not wear one, would not put on a sword, and refused to purchase a new suit for the occasion. He did, however, forgo his usual fur cap and carried a modest white cloth one under his arm. For Deane the event was bittersweet; after having strived for nearly two years and successfully achieved the breakthrough that this ceremony recognized, he was being recalled home as though he had failed at the task.

  Once Deane’s recall notice had arrived, and more so after the ceremony at Versailles, Arthur Lee brazenly accused Deane and Franklin of playing fast and loose with public and private accounts, failing to consult him on every matter, and allowing Vergennes to choose Gérard as France’s ambassador without Lee’s knowledge or permission. These spurred Franklin to write a series of notes:

  There is a Stile in some of your Letters … whereby superior Merit is assumed to yourself in point of Care, and Attention to Business, and Blame on your Colleagues is insinuated.… I hate Disputes. I am old, cannot have long to live, have much to do and no time for Altercation. If I have … borne your Magisterial Snubbings and Rebukes without Reply, ascribe it to the right Causes, my Concern for the Honour and Success of our Mission, which would be hurt by our Quarrelling … and my Pity of your Sick Mind, which is forever Tormenting itself, with its Jealousies, Suspicions and Fancies.

  Franklin did not send these missives. Instead he crafted a less irate though no less forthright response to Lee, after which he ceased writing to him for several months.

  * * *

  The success or failure of any message often depends on its timing. In mid-April 1778, nearly a month after Simeon Deane had left for America with the Franco-American pacts, the North government finally dispatched in the same direction its own team of three, under Frederick Howard, the Earl of Carlisle, twenty-nine, and including Eden and a former governor of West Florida. The Carlisle commission’s proposals, which would grant virtually everything that the rebelling colonists had demanded before the onset of hostilities, refuted many of Great Britain’s war aims—in particular, the right to tax Americans with or without their consent. All that Great Britain would retain was the right to tax non-British imports to America. One critic grumbled that should the Americans accept these proposals, they would be better off than Britons, as they would have all the advantages of being British citizens and few of the burdens.

  At nearly the same moment of the Carlisle commission’s sailing, Silas Deane also embarked, with Gérard. They first traveled aboard a small ship in an attempt to conceal that once they were offshore in the Mediterranean they would transfer to join d’Estaing, whose fleet was so large that it had drawn many observers: Eleven ships of the line and fourteen other vessels with a total of 1,394 cannon, all of it underwritten by sizable loans from Chaumont.

  D’Estaing aimed to reach America in time for a late spring campaign. But his progress on the thousand nautical miles between Toulon and Gibraltar was delayed by weather and by problems of command and personnel. Among his captains were Pierre-André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, forty-nine, considered the best French naval commander; Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, also forty-nine, whose circumnavigations of the world in 1766 and 1769 were highly respected and who, like d’Estaing, had been a soldier before becoming part of the navy; and Jacques-Melchior Saint-Laurent de Barras, fifty-eight, who had first gone to sea at fourteen. These senior men resented d’Estaing’s too-rapid promotion to vice admiral—he had been in the navy only a few years and had never commanded a squadron in battle. Their subordinate officers, all noble-born, were annoyed at d’Estaing’s willingness to include on each capital ship three “auxiliary” officers from the ranks of ordinary citizens. As Bougainville wrote in a diary, he was unacquainted with any of the petty officers on his ship, and “We are sailing with neither watch muster nor quarter-bill, with a crew three-quarters of whom know nothing about maneuvers, guns or the sea. And nearly all are seasick.” The ships also had physical defects, two being markedly slower than the others. What with all these difficulties, d’Estaing’s fleet took five weeks to clear Gibraltar.

  The British Admiralty was well aware of d’Estaing’s dispatch. Lord Germain wanted to intercept the fleet before it reached the Atlanti
c, but the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, contended that too few British ships were available to perform that task, and his view prevailed.

  * * *

  As d’Estaing proceeded westward, his way uncontested by the British, John Paul Jones set out in the Ranger, aiming to damage British coastal towns in retaliation for the wanton damage that British raiders repeatedly inflicted on Connecticut coastal towns. In a voyage lasting only twenty-eight days Jones seized two merchantmen, sinking one and sending the other to a French port to be sold; captured the British sloop Drake, and took two hundred prisoners after a “warm, close, and obstinate” gun battle; and mounted predawn raids on a coastal town and on Whitehaven, the Scottish port of his birth. Brazenly invading the mansion of a provincial lord, he missed capturing that peer, who was not at home, but won the hearts of a few Britons by setting loose on shore fishermen he had captured before encountering the Drake, and later tried to win more by a gallant attempt to return the provincial lord’s silver to the lady of the house.

  British newspaper accounts demonized Jones, who was five foot six and of fair complexion, as a large, swarthy pirate, which only heightened the impact of his raids. No English seaport had been attacked since 1667; now Jones had done so, forcing the Admiralty to deploy more warships on coastal patrols, a move that prevented them from being sent to America.

  * * *

  Although Floridablanca, Spain’s first minister, had refused to have Spain sign the Franco-American alliance, he did commit Spain to a policy of “benevolent neutrality” toward the new country. Bernardo de Gálvez, recently appointed viceroy of New Spain, resident in New Orleans, and Diego Joseph Navarro, the new governor of Cuba, were eager to help the United States and to counter British cavalier actions toward Spain’s colonies. When Virginia governor Patrick Henry requested 150,000 rifles from New Orleans, Gálvez worked with an American agent to find and transport these. Spanish funds and matériel found their way up the Mississippi to George Rogers Clark and his American forces, fighting in areas west of the original thirteen states. The citizens of St. Louis extended credit to Clark, who used it to buy munitions to defend the city. Gálvez’s benevolence permitted American soldiers to train in New Orleans while outfitting raiding ships to be sent against British targets in the Gulf of Mexico.

  Floridablanca also dispatched to America two agents to represent Spain’s interests, the brothers-in-law Don Juan de Miralles and Don Juan Elegio de Puentes. Traveling separately, both reached the United States in the spring of 1778. However, a congressional request made through them, to open the port of Havana to American trade, was declined; Governor Navarro sent word that it would be better to keep the trade in New Orleans and not overly provoke the British.

  Madrid continued to assure Versailles that Spain would likely act in concert with France on America once the treasure fleet returned from the New World late in the year, but even then might refuse if it saw no benefit. Floridablanca appeared not to care whether the United States achieved independence or if some additional trade would then accrue to France and Spain. “For herself,” he confided to Aranda, ambassador in Paris, “Spain has no other objective than to recover the shameful usurpations of Gibraltar and Minorca, and to cast out of the Gulf of Mexico, the Bay of Honduras, and the Coast of Campeche, those [British] settlers which trouble her no end.”

  10

  “To hinder the enemy from rendering himself master.” —Louis Duportail

  The exception that should prove the rule just as often provides evidence of the rule’s inadequacy. At a moment when Franklin and Deane had just been instructed by Congress to send no more European officers to America, another suitor showed up on their doorstep, with such good recommendations—from Saint-Germain and Vergennes, who almost never personally recommended anyone—that he seemed a terrific fit for the Continental army: Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolph Gerhard Augustin, Baron von Steuben, forty-seven, a Prussian who spoke no English but was fluent in French and had spent his entire life as a field officer in various militaries and as an aide to Frederick the Great. Two aspects of his character trailed him: first, that he was a superbly talented quartermaster and disciplinarian; and second, that he was suspected of homosexuality to the point that neither France nor Prussia was now willing to have him in its army. Some rumors said that he had been on the verge of being arrested in Prussia when he fled to France and, for the same reason, was unable to remain very long in Paris.

  The Americans had been made aware of the charges of pederasty but seemed unconcerned. However, Deane informed Steuben, recent instructions made it impossible to offer a paid position. Franklin would not even agree to pay Steuben’s expenses in crossing to America, issuing his denial, Steuben later recalled, “with an Air & Manner to which I was then little accustomed.” A week later Saint-Germain suggested that Steuben serve in America as a volunteer, and Beaumarchais agreed to underwrite his passage.

  The playwright then composed a series of letters, ostensibly from the principalities in which Steuben had served, to Washington, Morris, Laurens, and other leaders. The one from Franklin and Deane to Washington the Americans obligingly signed. It asserted that during the Seven Years’ War Steuben had been a major general. Actually he had been maréchal général de logis, director of logistics or quartermaster general, a much less exalted position. Moreover, as the most recent Steuben biographer writes of the content of these letters, “Nearly every statement was falsified or exaggerated, every detail—about Steuben’s rank and experience—deliberately misrepresented.”

  Steuben embarked from Marseilles along with his greyhound, his military aide-de-camp, and his secretary, Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau, seventeen, rumored to be his sexual partner. Du Ponceau’s love for Shakespeare and other English literary giants had driven him at an early age to learn English and to study linguistics. Unwilling to become a monk, he had escaped to Paris with Milton’s Paradise Lost in one pocket and a spare shirt in the other. There he entered the Beaumarchais literary circle and did occasional translations for members of the court. On board for America, he jotted down ideas for a “universal language and alphabet.”

  Landing in Portsmouth, Steuben sent the Beaumarchais-composed note to Washington. It stated:

  The Object of my greatest Ambition is to render your Country all the Services in my Power, and to deserve the title of a Citizen of America by fighting for the Cause of your Liberty.

  .… I could Say moreover (Were it not for the fear of offending your Modesty) that your Excellency is the only Person under whom (after having Served under the King of Prussia) I could wish to pursue an Art to which I have Wholly given up my Self.

  Steuben requested a reply in the care of John Hancock in Boston, where he and his group were heading.

  Du Ponceau while on board had made a bet that his dashing appearance in uniform would enable him to kiss the first American lady he saw on land; he managed to persuade a lass to help him win this wager. By the time the Steuben retinue reached Boston, du Ponceau was already feeling like an American. They were welcomed and celebrated by Hancock and Samuel Adams, among others. Du Ponceau found Sam Adams amazed at his republicanism.

  Washington’s reply advised Steuben to deal with Congress in seeking a commission, but added that he would be welcome at Valley Forge. In such exchanges with foreign aspirants Washington was unfailingly courteous, and behind this one was a hope that Steuben might supplant Conway as inspector general. At a stopover in York, Steuben, having heard of the difficulties between Gates and Washington, declined Gates’s offer of a domicile. Du Ponceau had similarly learned of Conway’s misbehavior and was mortified, having known Conway since his childhood, when “with him I had lisped my imperfect first English accents.”

  At Valley Forge, after Washington had spent time with Steuben, listened to his evaluation of the condition of the troops, and watched as he began to shape them up, he appointed Steuben “acting” inspector general, to supersede Conway.

  Steuben and du Ponceau becam
e friends in camp with the few Americans who spoke French—Laurens, Hamilton, Monroe, and Captain Benjamin Walker, who became Steuben’s life companion, as well as Katie Greene, the much-admired wife of General Nathanael Greene. The young American officers were awed by Steuben; de Kalb and Lafayette, who knew much more about European armies, not so much, but they also formed lasting friendships. The juniors responded well to Steuben’s stories of cavalry charges and his ability to discuss with them the works of the pillars of Enlightenment literature. The Americans’ enthusiasm for sophisticated discourse was mirrored in their letters, such as one that du Ponceau later recalled receiving from Laurens, written in English, French, Latin, Greek, and Spanish. Du Ponceau formed his closest friendship with Monroe; they wrote on each day that they did not spend time together, exchanging books, literary preferences, and mutual encouragement. In the Monroe-du Ponceau exchanges, and in those of the other young French and American officers at Valley Forge, the understanding grew of the higher purpose of the Franco-American connection: More was at stake than helping America sever a prior connection to an overbearing parent; the struggle was for the liberation of all peoples, everywhere, oppressed by tyrannical rulers.

  That ideal was reflected in a plan, hatched by Laurens and Fleury, to raise a battalion of three thousand slaves who would be given their freedom in exchange for frontline service in the army. L’Enfant, who had come to Valley Forge and was assisting Steuben, asked to be an officer in that battalion. Washington agreed with Laurens that slaves were a neglected resource and objected only that mustering them into the army would impoverish their owners. Henry Laurens, also a slave owner, offered more significant resistance, and his son John dutifully shelved the plan.

  Duportail drew up a far more practical plan for aiding the army, by professionalizing a corps of engineers that he would lead. Washington enthusiastically forwarded and recommended the plan to Congress.