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

He agreed to investigate the matter. The power which first recognizes the independence of the Americans, he said, will be the one to gather all the fruits of this war.. Franklin insisted on British recognition of American independence and refused to consider a peace separate from France, America's staunch ally. The Revenge was owned half by Congress and half by Hodge and David Conyngham, a wealthy cousin of the captains who was on a business trip to Europe. 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. British spies were everywhere. Within 50 years, the European empires in the Americas would shrink and new nations would spread across the whole of the Americas. Anything known in Congress was apt to percolate to Whitehall. Washingtons defeat on Long Island and his retirement through the Jerseys made the Bourbon courts doubt if the war could succeed. Part 2 focuses on the French land and naval forces that assisted the U.S. in combating the British military. Secret aid was no longer sufficient, he argued, for the British claimed that the policy of the Bourbons was to destroy England by means of the Americans, and America by means of the British. A few hours later Vergennes warned his royal master that it looked very much as if Britain had at last offered America her independence, opening the way to an alliance with the motherland. Stormont subsided; England needed time too. E . However, Franklin had boarded the Reprisal for that very purpose. 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. The time had come to invite Wentworth in. Early in 1774 Franklin had written from London to a friend at home that he wished Americans might know what we are and what we have. After much private groping and anguish he had discovered what he was: not a colonial American, but that new man, an American. It is also true that Franklin could have helped along such conspiratorial work without leaving a trace of his part of it. British general Henry Clinton marched north from New York and could have helped Burgoyne turn the tide at Saratoga, but he never arrived. By October Beaumarchais had spent the original 2,000,000 livres from the Bourbon kings, plus another million from France, and 2,600,000 livres in the form of credit from French merchants. Over the course of the war, France contributed an estimated 12,000 soldiers and 32,000 sailors to the American war effort. The two Lees and Izard were busily writing letters about the expected alliance. There would soon be an unfavorable change in the Spanish ministry: Grimaldi, friendly to America, would be replaced as chief minister by the Count of Floridablanca, who feared that an America now independent would before long overrun Spanish possessions in the New World. In order to make the war effective he reminded Vergennes of things Vergennes could do. Congress had appointed Jefferson as the third commissioner, but he had declined to serve because of his wifes illness, and the Adams-Lee bloc in Congress rushed their man in as substitute. America could fight only her own sort of war on the seas, and this had started before Lexington and would continue long after Yorktown. It happened that Franklin and Morris were the only members of the Committee of Secret Correspondence in town when the courier arrived, and they resolved to keep the news to themselves. Wickes got clean away, only to founder in a storm off the Banks of Newfoundland. These crucial French contributions exemplify the global character of the . No charge was made against Deane, but for two years Congress kept him in Philadelphia at its pleasure while the press vilified him. Franklins hosts were the merchants Pliarne and Penet, who had little standing in Nantes, but who may have been subsidized by Vergennes. Hortalez & Company now became what it had always pretended to bea private concernand he kept on sending supplies to the United States until after Yorktown. His policy was to reconcile Britain and the United States; never, if he could help it, would Spain go to war on the American side. For once Wentworth brought the King good news, the only kind he could ever believe. The traffic which had started about 1770 was very large. Representatives of the French and American governments signed the Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce on February 6, 1778. Moreover, importers of cannon and powder had to arm their merchantmen, and if their merchantmen were transformed into privateers, as many were, they needed a large supply of ammunition. Wentworth reported to Eden that he had found Deane vain, desultory and subtle and indeed the commissioner must have had some difficulty keeping a straight face. Spain had ceased her royal aids to America. He decided that Jonathan Williams, the soul of probity, should be drawn into the Lee crusade against all rivals, and soon Congress was hearing about Williams embezzlements of public funds. Franklin prudently released his grandnephew from his post as special agent for the mission, and he remained in Nantes in private business. The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. The sacred British mails were rushed down to Passy, and then the storm broke at Versailles. Tobacco and rice, strictly reserved to England, were now rushed across the Atlantic to Amsterdam or Lorient and exchanged for cannon, powder, teas, and other goods which Americans could not do without. He had connived in the Conyngham raid in the confidence that the next time Stormont came fuming into his Cabinet with threats of war, he could hand the pestiferous ambassador his portfolio and wish him a pleasant old age in England. 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. Vergennes sensed that the benign old Doctor was ready to fence with naked steel, that he perfectly realized France was playing the old game of power rivalry, and that he would co-operate in the gameup to a pointto keep France as an ally. Like Great Britain, France had a young king. Then he tried to tempt Deane with the honours and emoluments which the King would bestow on him if he brought about a reconciliation. As for the French islands, the Cape developed into a prime source for munitions, and Martinique became an American privateer base before Franklin sailed. The United States, far from asking something for herself, was in reality advancing Bourbon interests and fighting their war. On July 14 a mob stormed the Bastille prison in Paris looking for arms to protect itself from the king's forces. He was lulled by the specious truce with Francebut how would he feel if Captain Wickes captured a royal packet carrying the royal mails? Hodge was not released until the last of the fishing fleet was safely home in France. Soon Franklin and Deane had a group of young men busy in the various ports, helping merchantmen and privateers speed on their way, informing them of shifts in French regulations and dangerous areas patrolled by British warships, recruiting French seamen to fill out depleted ships companies, finding masters for ships and ships for masters. Discovering that point at which the common interests of France and the United States diverged would be a delicate task, and also an enjoyable one since he was matching wits with Franklin. Between them Beaumarchais and Deane amassed arms and every necessary article of clothing for an army of 30,000 men. Gunrunning to America was certainly going on in 1774, and no doubt Franklin knew about it. Delays which were not the fault of Deane and Beaumarchais held up most of the fleet for months after lading. The American Influence of the Enlightenment Philosophy on the French Revolution. Finally, not daring to return to France, he made for Cap Ferrol in Spain. He contributed a million livres to the colonies war chest and his uncle, Charles III of Spain, followed suit. Wentworths connection with the secret service was not suspected; Franklin regarded him as a former patriot who had joined the Tory ranks and must be treated with caution. His new cutter, the, When Vergenness orders came through to sell the, Conyngham lusted for his fine new cutter, which mounted 14 six-pounders and 22 swivels, and would have a crew of more than a hundred American and French seamen. This well-connected young man had been sent direct from Congress to buy two ships to serve as packets for the mission. A blacksmiths son, he had worked his way through Yale and had started to practice law when he married the daughter of a great merchant family. 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. France was a long-term historical rival with the Kingdom of Great Britain, from which the Colonies were attempting to separate.. A Treaty of Alliance between the French and . 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.. Franklin dealt with these suicidal moves in his usual oblique fashion. Affairs at Nantes became more and more tangled, and William Lee did nothing to straighten them out. To forestall a truce with Britain, the ministers had stipulated that the United States must make no peace that surrendered her independence. Vergennes may never have realized what had happened during that fateful year of 1777. England, Franklin said suavely, could hardly object to France sending the battleships with their crews, since Britain herself was borrowing or hiring troops from other states. In the late 1780s, Jefferson witnessed first-hand the beginnings of the French Revolution and what would become the eventual overthrow of King Louis XVI and the French monarchy. The dramatist became a whirlwind of activity. Late in October, 1776, Benjamin Franklin sailed for France to direct the foreign sector of the extraordinary war into which his young country had been plunged. He did extremely well in these successive careers, and now at forty held a position of high honor. But the early ratio of seven British merchantmen captured to one American lost was rapidly declining, and Britains patrol of the seaboard was making it difficult to maintain a supply line of military and civilian goods. But once these two great steps in the right direction were made, it was easy to push through resolutions for negotiating foreign alliances. Islanders and continentals had worked out a prototype of the free trade which was one of Franklins major objectives. Yet Franklin had a high opinion of the human race and lofty hopes for his particular segment of it. Soon the old names were changed to the Committee of Foreign Affairs and the Commercial Committee to make this distinction clear. 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. Then, when the diplomatic pressure eased, he would stealthily release them one at a time. Vergennes was so disheartened by the bad news which had arrived even before these disasters were known, and he so much dreaded a sudden declaration of war by Britain, that in August he formally closed the ports of France to American privateers and their prizes. This was interesting; evidently the expected overture from England was at hand. This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. When Franklin came to the signing . 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. It turned out that the French warships had been sent with orders to protect not only the islands of Louis XVI, but also any American vessels in the area. Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949, Benjamin Franklin And The French Alliance, Franklin was now seventy, afflicted with gout, and wretchedly tired from his labors in Congress and its candle-burning committees. He terrorized the towns on the east coast of England and Scotland. The two Lee brothers in Congress saw that their brothers in London were put in posts of influence. In 1757, Franklin went to England to represent the Pennsylvania Assembly as a diplomat in its fight against the descendants of the Penn . Later Congress backed up this pledge and authorized all tenders necessary to get Bourbon help. Conclusion. Continental Congress established the Secret Committee of Correspondence to publicize the American cause in Europe. During the last eighteen months Conyngham had been in and out of the port, always hull down before the British realized he had vanished, and this time they were determined to get him. Stamp Act of 1765. As the American who best understood both sides of the Atlantic, Franklin had carried much of that burden, and for a long time to come would carry all the responsibility for getting maximum aid from the neutral powers without compromising the future of the new republic. 2. The historian Henri Doniol, who edited the secret French archives of the period, claimed that Franklin did more than coach the Whigs; that he in fact started an international gunrunning ring by quiet negotiations with certain arms manufacturers and exporters in England, Holland, and France. Knowing George III as he did, Franklin realized the importance of insulting him while all Europe looked on. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary.