A week later she was halfway out of the harbor when a British sloop and cutter were sighted. Now she was acknowledged as a nation in her own right, a nation whose treaties protected her commerce on the seas and her growing space on land, a rising people for whose friendship Britain and France must compete. The merchant was the intendant for supplying clothing for the French Armyand of late the American Army, for he had given Beaumarchais a million livres worth of clothing on credit. The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. For the first time since Britain was a maritime power, Deane wrote Morris, the River Thames and others of its ports were crowded with French and other ships taking in freight, in order to avoid the risk of having property captured.. It was run, personally and in great detail, by George III himself, who spent hours reading the reports of agents scattered over America, the West Indies, and Europe. 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. 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. 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. He radiated reassurance like one of his own stoves; the warmth and charm of his personality masked his Merlin powers. Because of the Family Compact, Spain would have to approve the alliance with America, and accordingly Vergenness memoir was sent to Madrid with its proposal for a triple offensive and defensive alliance. In March the Doctor was given a charming house at Passy on the grounds of the Htel Valentinois, which belonged to the merchant prince Donatien le Rey de Chaumont. Americans, for instance, were forbidden to trade directly with foreign countries or with the foreign islands of the Caribbean, except in a few commodities which could be sold under cumbersome and expensive restrictions. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognized the U.S. as an independent nation and promoted trade between France and America. Much of the maddening delay in dispatching the ships was caused by Vergennes. Captain Conyngham had lost his ship on the last voyage, and was given command of the Surprise , a lugger newly bought for Congress. Congress demanded impossibilities of him: a huge loan which France could not afford, French battleships and seamen, and the prompt entrance of the Bourbons into the war. The French Revolution was a momentous historical event that set enduring patterns for modern revolutionary movements and for much of modern politics in general. The move was long overdue, for the Americans had been making a brilliant success of their sea raids all over the Atlantic and the Caribbean. During the summer Congress became alarmed at the massing of French warships in the Caribbean and sent young William Bingham to find out whether this mobilization portended action against the United States. The arrest did much to soothe British wrath. Franklin immediately got to work at this dismal situation. 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. But Beaumarchais had already outlined his plan for Hortalez & Company in a memoir to the King, and he persuaded Vergennes that this was the perfect device for concealing the Bourbon conspiracy against Britain. Native American groups had to choose the loyalist or patriot causeor somehow maintain a neutral stance during the Revolutionary War. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain's position in the New World. 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. On May 3 Vergennes wrote his royal master that he proposed to call in Sieur Montaudoin of Nantes and entrust him with forwarding funds and arms to America. He raided in the North Sea and the Baltic; he sailed around England and then around Ireland, everywhere taking prizes. Conyngham shook them off and began the most spectacular cruise of the war. Most of them were of no earthly use to the Commander in Chief and drained an impoverished Congress of money and patience. The situation at home was alarming. There is a distinct anomaly in the fact that even with captures from British transports Congress scraped together for Washingtons use in 1775 only about forty tons of gunpowder. Athur Lees mission to Spain had done nothing to warm her heart to America. On July 14 a mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris looking for arms to protect itself from the king's forces. Because the future could somehow work in him he had become the sort of man coming generations would repeat. In the interval, quite unsuspected by his compatriots, he did high-level work for Eden. The result of this conflict would not only determine the fate of the thirteen North American colonies, but also alter the balance of colonial power throughout the world. Ironically, this was one of the key factors that caused the revolution in the first place. On his first escape from Old Mill in 1779, Conyngham tunneled out with 53 companions. France and Britain drifted into hostilities without a declaration of war when their fleets off Ushant off the northwest coast of France on June 17, 1778. The chief French ammunition dumps were Martinique and Cap Franois (now Cap Haitien) on Santo Domingo, known to seagoing Americans simply as the Cape. The Spanish shipped to New Orleans and Havana, and the British chose islands convenient to Washingtons chief arsenal, the Dutch island of St. Eustatia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Yet, it represented much more to those individuals who proposed the gift. While Spain's influence on the Revolutionary War was significant, perhaps the most profound impact was the broader American Revolution's impact on Spain. As a result of Lees carelessness in leaving his portfolio in his room when he went out to dine, the commissioners had to abandon the building of a great frigate in Amsterdam, and she was sold to Louis XVI at cost. Between them Beaumarchais and Deane amassed arms and every necessary article of clothing for an army of 30,000 men. They found the star of them all in Dunkirk. Later Lee developed this fantasy into a sinister engine of destruction against those he hated. When Vergenness orders came through to sell the Revenge , nobody was alarmed. Franklin comforted himself by beginning his magnificent work for the prisoners at Forton and the Old Mill in England, masters and men of the Continental Navy and the privateer fleet who were classed as pirates by George III and who sickened and starved in his antiquated prisons. It is significant that while the Americans and French trusted Bancroft implicitly, the British were always suspicious of him, had his letters opened at the post office, and watched his movements. As soon as Arthur Lee arrived from London the three commissioners wrote Vergennes announcing their appointment to negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce with France. He was the mutant of a new species. Wickes got clean away, only to founder in a storm off the Banks of Newfoundland. When Colonel Tucker told Franklin and Morris that there was a respectable supply of gunpowder in the royal arsenal at St. Georges which could be abstracted in a midnight raid, a bargain was struck. It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. Conclusion. Franklin labored incessantly to get prisoners exchanged in the time-honored way, with only partial success. 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. Vergennes kept him safe in jail, for the minister was co-operating with Franklins policy up to a dangerous point. He went back to London in a fury. The American Revolution of 1775-1789, which concluded as the revolution in France was unfolding, was perhaps the most significant. During the struggle for American independence, France provided the money, troops, armament, military leadership, and naval support that tipped the balance of military power and paved the way for the Continental Army's ultimate victory. Here we are too near the sun, and the business is dangerous; with you it may be done more easily.. 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. 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. Franklin found that the American stock had lately plunged to its lowest point. In 1865, Edouard de Laboulaye (a French . The power which first recognizes the independence of the Americans, he said, will be the one to gather all the fruits of this war.. The news of Howes occupation of Philadelphia arrived in November as the climax of an excruciating period in which Franklins own campaign had reached a stalemate. He wrote Lord North that the agent has shewn great zeal and dispatch in the business he had so handsomely undertaken and ably accomplished.. Join, or Die, the first political cartoon in America, was created by Benjamin Franklin and was published in a newspaper on May 9, 1754.The cartoon later became a symbol of colonial unity during the American Revolution and remains popular. The Continental Navy would never be able to take on the larger British units. The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. It led the French to seek an alliance with the Americans to dethrone Louis XVI. A first fleet under the orders of the Admiral d'Estaing was dispatched to . 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. 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. He returned to Paris with his usual air of pompous impeccability, for his conscience was light. What event launched the beginning of witchcraft accusations in Salem. No doubt the colonies hoarded local supplies for their own defense, and the merchants hoarded their stocks for higher prices. 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.. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. The story of his amazing accomplishments, of his diplomatic feats, of his wizardry in supplying the Continental armies, of his struggles with envious fellow commissioners, scheming enemies, and vacillating friendsthis is the burden of Helen Augurs new book, The Secret War of Independence (Duell, Sloan and PearceLittle, Brown). He was the unifying force of the Revolution, the one man who could understand and use effectively the complex elements which composed it. The fact is that Congress had little authority over the coloniesit managed to adopt the Army, but the Continental Navy was a bitter joke. Franklin had already done his utmost with the ministry, and there was nothing left but a new experimentwhat would much later be called psychological warfare. Many of them were now flocking to Europe, for the word had been passed of the hospitality of French and Spanish ports if the proper techniques of evasion were followed. France Allied with American Colonies. Which French foreign minister and supporter of American independence convinced the French king to form an alliance with the Patriots? This rule was so thoroughly disobeyed that great shipping houses like Willing & Morris of Philadelphia kept factors, or at least correspondents, all over Europe and the Caribbean to take care of their trade. Tom Morris was dragging out the last months of his wretched life, and Lee saw no point in beating a dead horse. The country had no President and Cabinet, no executive departments, no constitution. Franklin took charge of diplomatic duties, Arthur Lee undertook missions to Spain and Prussia which happily kept him out of Paris at a crucial period, and Deane continued his commercial activities. Compare And Contrast The American Revolution And French Revolution. French Revolutionary wars, title given to the hostilities between France and one or more European powers between 1792 and 1799. A riving home just after Lexington, Franklin had found the leaders in Congress still struggling against their enforced propulsion towards independence. Shipping was at a premium; in the last year the price of vessels had tripled. Franklin was a shrewd judge of men, and his unclouded confidence in Bancroft needs some extraordinary explanation. France's Debt Problems. How long could he continue? Like the first conflict of that name, it was a period of intermittent warfare and political and economic rivalry between the two powers. Anthony Todd, secretary of the General Post Office, read Franklins letters to people in England. With the appointment of the mission to France the affairs of the two secret committees were theoretically unscrambled; the commissioners were to take charge of foreign relations, and young Tom Morris of commercial matters. His future United States included Canada and the Floridas and the British West Indies, especially Bermuda and the Bahamas. He had come to the point where he must drop his perilous but always enjoyable collaboration with Franklin and play for France alone. Instead of using direct pressure he used leverage. The traffic which had started about 1770 was very large. A few days later Louis XVI made the United States a loan of 2,000,000 livres. He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. Deanes griefs were personal. 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. Overview of the four causes: 1. B.) America could fight only her own sort of war on the seas, and this had started before Lexington and would continue long after Yorktown. 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. He would not believe reports which meant bad news for England, or fully credit those which came from spies whose personal lives this virtuous burgher disapproved. Now he must placate Stormont. They all hated and feared Britain as the newly dominant nation of Europe. John Adams once remarked that while Washington was to be respected as a private individual, in Congress I feel myself to be superior to General Washington. He objected to the commander being allowed to name his own generals and thought Congress should carry on every function of war except shoot down redcoats. He spent much of the latter half of 1776 in Paris as mentor to the inexperienced American, and the close friendship thus begun lasted as long as Deane lived. On the land, if Washington finally got enough men and guns, he might wear down British troops far from their home base. Even respected modern historians will repeat some of Arthur Lees calumnies about Franklin and Deane, Jonathan Williams, and William Carmichael, though they have been disproved over and over since their creation in a sick mind. In the matter of the Hortalez ships, it was Vergennes who had yielded. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. Part 2 focuses on the French land and naval forces that assisted the U.S. in combating the British military.