how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

He left the rack ruined in fortune, health, and mind, and openly went over to the British. The two Lees and Izard were busily writing letters about the expected alliance. But Bancroft was in the most strategic position of any informer, and his conduct at Passy was mysterious. The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. 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. She had stolen Hollands priority on the seas and had swept France from the American continent and the best part of her fisheries. What was the main purpose of the Stamp Act Congress? The American Revolution of 1775-1789, which concluded as the revolution in France was unfolding, was perhaps the most significant. Q. With great fanfare Lee proposed to make Prussia a second France. He returned to Paris with his usual air of pompous impeccability, for his conscience was light. In a word, Franklin laid the cornerstone of American foreign relations, and for a long time to come American treaties would be modeled on these first ones with France. 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. May 12, 1780. 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. E . Vergennes was alarmed. France is one of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) top five troop contributors. The Comte de Vergennes. Floridablancas policies prevailed; he wanted to keep the United States too weak to threaten Spanish possessions in America. His Amphitrite and Mercure were already home, having delivered their supplies at Portsmouthgunpowder and blankets and clothing, sixty cannon, and 12,000 stand of arms. The French Revolution was influenced by the experiences and systems of other nations. The warehouses lining her one street, a mile long, were crammed with munitions, ships stores, bolts of cloth; sacks of sugar and tobacco covered the very sands, and the roadstead was packed with merchantmen. France did not wait for the announcement of July Fourth. Deanes griefs were personal. Every man aboard was lost except the cook. The two men had been on fairly close terms in Congress, where Deane had sat from the first day as a delegate from Connecticut. In 1758 Britain found a new strategy. how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution. France, wretchedly poor at the bottom of its society and jaded and apprehensive at the top, was rushing towards its own revolution, and the violent emotions which would ruin the French Revolution were tripped off in wild demonstrations of welcome. But he was needed more in Nantes. 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. But his eventual victory depended on two essentials which only Europe could provide: military supplies of all sorts and a powerful navy. War profiteering was pandemic. A new nation had emerged, and in time each individual would realize his new identity. No doubt the colonies hoarded local supplies for their own defense, and the merchants hoarded their stocks for higher prices. America, Franklin retorted, is ready to fight fifty years to win it.. Anything he could learn about the missions connections with Spain and other countries was wanted. All this was excruciating, since Lee had trumpeted in letters home that he had the ministry and Hortalez in his pocket. Franklin resolved to break through any limitations put on his mission by Congress. The American was adulated, wined and dined. The situation at home was alarming. Economic historians will recognize the invaluable research and work of two individuals in particular that this article draws from: Merrill Jensen, and . This was amazing enough; France had broken through the limits of her ostensible neutrality and was allowing Martinique to become a base of war against Britain. General Washington in the American Revolution. It is also true that Franklin could have helped along such conspiratorial work without leaving a trace of his part of it. 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. 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. 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. A week later she was halfway out of the harbor when a British sloop and cutter were sighted. During 1775, in London on a royal errand, he was in close touch with the American patriots. was part of a larger war between Britain and France. Edmund Pendleton was, according to John Adams . However, Franklin had boarded the Reprisal for that very purpose. Congress had sent the King the Olive Branch Petition, which paralyzed war efforts for many months. The table has been produced based upon "Ferguson's estimate of the total cost of the war": Edwin J. Perkins, American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700-1815 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1994), 103, Table 5.4. These prospects were bleak enough in December, 1775, but Franklin sent Bonvouloir back with such a rosy report that they immediately improved. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. It was with the greatest difficulty, he wrote, I persuaded them to insist on the recognition of our sovereignty, and the acknowledgement of our independence. 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. February 6, 1778. 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. According to Doniol, Franklin dealt through Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes, a great shipping merchant, and the savant Dr. Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg. British general Henry Clinton marched north from New York and could have helped Burgoyne turn the tide at Saratoga, but he never arrived. Edward Bancroft had been in British pay since 1772. Deane was in and out of the Passy house, keeping his hotel quarters for business and the entertaining of transient sea captains and a horde of friends. He only succeeded in quarreling with them both, and when he tried to see Vergennes, he was quite properly snubbed. Sailcloth and shoes, embroidered waistcoats and fusils, cannon and wig powder were crated and piled on the docks for shipment to the country that needed everything. He went back to London in a fury. The Doctor, instead of staying with the Montaudoins, allowed himself to be captured by people he disliked. 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. In order to make the war effective he reminded Vergennes of things Vergennes could do. Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. At last America would hear of the third Lee brother, hitherto a cipher, as its savior in Europe. Vergennes, who had confidently hoped to receive these protests under very different circumstances, was forced to buy a little more time at the expense of his American friends. France Allied with American Colonies. Following hard on the American Revolution (1776-83), the sweeping aside of the French feudal order demonstrated the irresistible rise of freedom and enlightenment. Bermuda, which barely escaped becoming the fourteenth state, had a large merchant colony on the Dutch island, and there sold her American friends the thousand fine cedar sloops she built or refitted for them. In the matter of the Hortalez ships, it was Vergennes who had yielded. To the citizens of Nantes the alliance was not merely a commercial bond, but a blend of credos and enthusiasms which they shared with their friends overseas. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. During the American Revolution, the American colonies faced the significant challenge of conducting international diplomacy and seeking the international support it needed to fight against the British. A generation after the end of the Revolutionary War, new revolutions emerged in nearly a dozen Spanish colonies in Central and South America. Vergennes himself could not have stated the Bourbon feelings about Britain more accurately. 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. His background was no more humble than Franklins, but his friend could dress like a Quaker while Deane amassed a huge wardrobe of velvets and satins and drained his private purse entertaining his new French acquaintances. He had sent some of his baggage ahead to Florence, never dreaming that an Izard would not be received in the duchy. 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. Vergennes admitted that open assistance to the United States meant war, but war was in any case inevitable. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787. France had been secretly aiding the American Colonies since 1776, because France was angry at Britain over the loss of Colonial territory in the French and Indian War. He understood not only the practical mechanics of business but the direction it would take after the war; his economic thinking was often bold and creative. Franklin was now seventy, afflicted with gout, and wretchedly tired from his labors in Congress and its candle-burning committees. At the first hint of this the Doctor tendered his resignation, which to his relief was not accepted. Britain had acquired a massive debt fighting the French and Indian War. How long could he continue? 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 islet of St. Eustatia, an international free port in the northern Leewards, was a fountainhead of what Samuel Adams called the Unum Necessarium . "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 . 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. Contemporaries experienced the French Revolution as a set of interlocking changes or stages that seemed driven by some kind of mechanism or impetus. He had to fend off a break with England until France was ready for war. British firms had also been running munitions to the colonies, and continued to do so, despite orders-in-council. Louis XVI was making a new advance of 3,000,000 livres to Congress. Wentworth, he wrote North, is an avowed stock jobber and I never let that go out of my mind. He was a smaller copy of Robert Morris and aspired to become a great international merchant like his friend. 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. Too much depended on Franklin. Hodge was not released until the last of the fishing fleet was safely home in France. The fact is that Congress had little authority over the coloniesit managed to adopt the Army, but the Continental Navy was a bitter joke. Since France and Spain were not responding to the offer of a trade alliance, he raised his sights and proposed what amounted to a military one. King Louis XVI was born in 1754 and was pronounced king of France when he succeeded his grandfather in 1774. He had never outgrown some early drive to make the blacksmiths son a great gentleman. 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. From May, 1777, to May, 1778, Congress would receive no direct word from its mission in Paris. The only source for salt during the war was the Turks Islands beds at the tail of the Bahama chain, long a Bermudian monopoly. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. It did contribute to the huge French debt that was the root cause of the French Revolution by accepting Military and economic assisstance from France during the American Revolution. 3. By September Congress lamentable trade embargo would include the West Indies, and no more mainland produce would be sent Bermuda, which meant a galloping famine. With British warships on the prowl the voyage was dangerous, but Franklin had brought his grandsons along. 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. The next day the Crown Council decided to conclude the alliance, and Vergennes rushed word to Passy that France would carry out her secret agreement of December 17 and fight at Americas side until her independence was won. 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. Athur Lee, who became Congress agent in London after Franklins departure, had been in conspiratorial relations with Beaumarchais during his visits to England. What was the intended purpose of the Albany Congress in 1754? The arrest did much to soothe British wrath. 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. 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. His beloved wife had died, and his best friend Robert Morris had thrown him over because he had told the truth about Tom. Americas first decisive victory held the promise of the final one at Yorktown. Continental Congress established the Secret Committee of Correspondence to publicize the American cause in Europe. Delays which were not the fault of Deane and Beaumarchais held up most of the fleet for months after lading. The man who believed there was never a good war or a bad peace was about to use all his powers to sweep the Bourbon nations into the War of Independence. American merchantmen picked up contraband all over Europe; the British, Dutch, and French sent some cargoes direct to the thirteen colonies, but far greater amounts to their islands in the Caribbean, to be picked up by American traders. With economic law as a lever he got Congress to open trade with the whole world, Great Britain excepted, three months before independence was ratified. The French loan was a godsend. After that opening wedge, which tacitly killed the embargo, Franklins resolution for world trade was bound to go through. Washingtons defeat on Long Island and his retirement through the Jerseys made the Bourbon courts doubt if the war could succeed. Franklin faced the critical year of 1777 with the knowledge that the British fleet would pound American hopes to nothing unless France and Britain began their ordained war. Representatives of the French and American governments signed the Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce on February 6, 1778. The two Lee brothers in Congress saw that their brothers in London were put in posts of influence. However, Franklin was a wizard at intrigue, and many secrets lie with him in the Christ Church burying ground. The French Revolution began in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille on July 14th. 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. France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. 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. He had corrupted his government from Lord North down in the hope of buying security for himself. In the summer of 1775 Colonel Henry Tucker, whose clan dominated island affairs, came to Philadelphia in a state of worry and resentment. The American Revolution. He went on with suggestions for arming vessels in Martinique and manning them with French seamen, which must have amused Bingham, who was already busy at this very work. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. A French expeditionary force arrived in the United States in 1780. 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. This kept him out of personal debates and increased his potential. 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. William Lee was rewarded with office as alderman of the city, a title which he did not relinquish until the war was almost over and he knew which side would win. He wrote home that in the fighting there had been good order and readiness equal to anything of the kind in the best ships of the kings fleet.. Almost consciously Lee longed for that consummation. He made for the English Channel, where he took four small merchantmen, which he sent to Lorient under prize masters. Franklin insisted that Arthur Lee was mad, and perhaps only a madman could have created a cabal of such malignity and scope out of nothing but his own emotions. Pliarne and Penet undertook to sell the indigo, meanwhile giving Franklin a small cash advanceand that was about the last the mission got of the indigo money. 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. 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. Though still reeling from the loss of its American colonies at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the country remained a global power with a strong army and navy. The single most important diplomatic success of the colonists during the War for Independence was the critical link they forged . A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . Like Great Britain, France had a young king. He gave the Doctor the unsigned letter from Eden, which said that Britain was ready to fight for another ten years rather than grant American independence. 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. The first similarity between the two revolutions are their origins. For once Wentworth brought the King good news, the only kind he could ever believe.