POLICY OF CHOISEUL 687 conditions were not severe enough to prevent France from entering at once upon the task of upsetting them. As early as April 1763, Louis XV sanctioned the scheme of the Comte de Broglie, who, acting as the minister of his secret diplomacy, commissioned the preparation of plans for the invasion of England. This was to be the first blow struck at the commencement of a new war, instead of wasting strength, as hitherto, upon distant expeditions. "Officers", says the Duc de Broglie, "were sent to England who reconnoitred the possibilities of invasion, the points of disembarkation, the means of obtaining supplies, and the roads, camping grounds, etc., as far as London. On the French side of the Channel, all means of executing the project were exactly calculated." The two chief agents chosen for this purpose were a young officer of Engineers, the Marquis de la Rozière, and the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, first secretary of the French Embassy at London, whose subsequent career is one of the minor curiosities of history. All this was done without the privity of Louis' ministers. But it was quite in keeping with Choiseul's policy. That policy throughout this period remained the same. It was to secure France on land by alliances on the continent, whilst making France and Spain strong and prosperous enough to wage a successful war abroad against Great Britain and Portugal. Choiseul's hopes were perpetually cheated. As the crises arose which demanded the action he had prepared for, he was forced to hesitate and hang back, realising that neither France nor Spain was capable of carrying on war successfully. When the moment came to act, therefore, his policy involved him in endless obscurities and contradictions. The peace preliminaries were no sooner signed than Choiseul applied himself to reforming the army. He rendered it capable of being rapidly increased and promptly used. As Minister of Marine (1761-6), he organised the reconstruction of the fleet. Empty dockyards were stirred to life; money flowed where before there was not a sou of credit. He found a force of forty-four ships of the line and ten frigates. He left, at the time of his fall, sixty-four ships of the line and fifty frigates, or grosses corvettes, ready for sea. These and the rehabilitation of French finances, a task in which he was less successful, were necessary preliminary steps towards the accomplishment of his great scheme. His ambition was, briefly, to establish French supremacy in the "two Mediterraneans"-that of Europe and that of the Gulf of Mexico. 3 Before the first year of the peace was out, Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty, was aware that the activity in French naval dockyards was great and alarming. In Toulon alone, twenty-six ships were reported to be more ready for sea than the twenty "intended" guard1 Boutaric, E., Correspondance inédite de Louis XV, 1, 291; Duc de Broglie, The King's Secret, 11, 81 seqq. 2 Gaillardet, F., Mémoire sur le Chevalier d'Éon; d'Éon, Mémoires et négociations. 3 Chevalier, Édouard, La marine française, p. 63. ships in all the English ports. A sudden and decisive blow by twenty sail of the line was feared, aimed at the ports and docks of England or Ireland. Secret intelligence revealed that "one of the principal Ministers of France" had stated that the French marine would certainly be re-established by the ensuing year, and that, the moment this was accomplished, France was resolved to wipe off the stains of defeat. Newfoundland was to furnish the pretext for the intended rupture. The point at issue there was whether the English had retained a right to share in the cod fishery about St Pierre and Miquelon, and it was the source of prolonged controversy (1764-83). In the meantime, the development of the Sugar Islands ceded by France was to be encouraged, rather than opposed, "because France was resolved to re-possess them very soon".1 In the colonial sphere Choiseul endeavoured to develop France's possessions overseas by substituting colonisation by bureau for colonisation by companies. The Compagnie des Indes, which was practically bankrupt,2 was suppressed, and the settlements made under its aegis were transferred to the immediate administration of the Crown. One company alone, the Compagnie de Barbarie, which enjoyed the monopoly of trade on the north coast of Africa, was allowed to retain its privileges. Elsewhere the State now assumed the task of provisioning the colonies and supplying them with negroes and settlers. With Choiseul colonisation was not so much an end in itself as a step towards that war of revenge against Great Britain for which he was always preparing. To this end he never ceased to urge Spain to "increase her naval and colonial power". And at San Ildefonso, he boasted, his influence was more powerful than at Versailles. One result of his advice was an attempt to reform the financial administration of the Spanish colonies, beginning with Mexico. The attempt was answered by insurrections at Los Angeles, Cuba and Quito.4 Plans, too, were drawn up by the Spaniards for the naval and military defence of their colonies. Choiseul insisted that improvement of the Navy was more vital than the preparation of plans. With this object, French engineers were introduced into the Spanish dockyards. During the Seven Years' War Choiseul had conducted an enquiry into the Spanish West Indian trade through the agency of the Abbé Béliardi. After the Peace of Paris he turned these investigations to account with a view to promoting the prosperity of French and Spanish colonial trade. A convention was signed in January 1768. But Choiseul was not given time to complete his scheme of a farreaching commercial union between the two countries directed 1 Egmont to Grenville, 3 Dec. 1763, Grenville Papers, п, 172. • Béliardi, Abbé, Correspondance, Bibliothèque Nationale. LA FRANCE ÉQUINOXIALE 689 against Great Britain. Meanwhile negotiations for opening the door of the Spanish Indies to the products of France resulted in the reduction of the duties on goods exported from Spain to America (1765). As such exports were mainly French in origin, France benefited by being thus enabled to undersell the British contraband goods which had hitherto commanded the market.1 Jamaica was the chief centre of the British interloping trade with the Spanish colonies. From that emporium were shipped the cargoes which British interlopers ran to the Spanish West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico. From Havana, too, they continued to conduct with Vera Cruz a contraband trade which the brief British occupation of that port had enabled them to establish. To Panama, to Louisiana and the Bay of Honduras British goods found their way and, with the connivance of the Portuguese, even to Uruguay and Buenos Aires. For the energy and individuality of British manufacturers and shippers enabled them to compete successfully with the Spanish merchants who, hampered at every step by formalities and taxes, were compelled to ship their goods by slow flotas and convoyed galleons.2 Grand as were the ideas of Choiseul and great as were his reforms, it was really in vain for him to fortify and enlarge ports, or to set up Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture for the colonies, so long as the stream of population, weakened by the loss of the Huguenots and diffused over too large an area, was fed only by soldiers, missionaries, and the riff-raff of the towns, shipped off against their will by order of the State and forbidden to return. A glaring instance of political and strategical ideas thus ignoring practical provision for gradual colonisation was furnished at this time by the disaster of Kourou. For now that Canada had gone the way of Nova Scotia, Choiseul's eager and scheming brain had set in motion a daring design intended to retrieve that loss. Out of the colonies remaining to France in the West Indies and Guiana, he proposed to create a new colonial empire, La France Équinoxiale, in the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies. In conjunction with his Spanish allies he hoped thereby to develop a market for French goods in Spanish America and to destroy British trade with the South. His attempt to plant a strong colony in French Guiana (Valley of Kourou and Cayenne) was the logical outcome of this far-seeing scheme. The district had been surveyed by his agents in the preceding year. Now shipload after shipload of French settlers, drawn from Nova Scotia and Louisbourg, and reinforced by the sweepings of France and the Mediterranean ports, was sent thither. Unhappily, the colonists were dumped upon à barren, fever-stricken coast, without shelter or adequate preparation for their reception. An epidemic broke out. Within a year, of 9000 colonists 3000 were dead; presently, hardly one remained (June 1 Blart, L., Rapports de la France et de l'Espagne, p. 7. CHBE I 2 Rousseau, F., Règne de Charles III, t. ¤.” 44 1763-4).1 Two years later another attempt to colonise the country was made and with Choiseul's support a company was formed for that purpose. But this second attempt proved only less expensive in lives and money than the first. Thus Choiseul's fine conception of calling in the South of America to redress the balance of the North ended in disaster, and the grand idea of La France Equinoxiale went the way of that of La France Septentrionale. The loss of so many settlers and thirty million livres was bad enough. But still worse for France, perhaps, at this critical era of overseas development, was the paralysing influence which such losses and failures were bound to exert upon French colonial enterprise. One instance of this may be found in the refusal of official encouragement which helped to render abortive an attempt to colonise Madagascar made by the Comte de Maudave in 1768. These were but the last of a long series of disasters, military and financial, which had befallen France overseas. Yet these very disasters would seem to have opened up a new and remarkable era of prosperity for her remaining colonies in the western hemisphere. All the energy and trade which had been absorbed by Canada and Louisiana were now directed to the West India islands. The golden age of the French West Indies began. For a time it seemed that the French would drive the British out of the sugar trade. They were greatly helped by the large smuggling trade carried on by the British American colonies. Aided by the Spanish alliance and the reduction of restrictions upon colonial trade, the prosperity of San Domingo, "the Pearl of the Antilles", advanced at a prodigious rate. By 1788 it had absorbed two-thirds of the whole foreign trade of France. It was estimated that the total value of the French West Indian trade in 1766 was one hundred million livres, as against sixty-six for the British trade, twenty-four for the Dutch and ten for the Spanish.2 Martinique, the seat of government of the French Windward Islands, remained the chief market and shipping station. Rodney had pointed out the great strategic value of the island he had captured, since it lay in the centre of the crescent formed by the Caribbee Islands, its arch to windward. This happy situation, its numerous harbours, safe roads and fertility of soil gave it, in his opinion, the preference over all the other islands.3 It was calculated that, if occupied by the British, its production of sugar could be more than doubled within a few years. It had, however, suffered severely from the British maritime supremacy during the Seven Years' War, and had not recovered from the disastrous bankruptcy which followed upon the huge commercial speculations of the Jesuits. Its commercial 1 See D'Aubigny, E., Choiseul et la France d'outre-mer; Marcus, W., Choiseul und die Katastrophe am Kourouflusse. 2 Raynal, G., Hist. philosophique...des établissements...dans les deux Indes. 3 Rodney to Grenville, Grenville Papers, п, 10. THE FRENCH WEST INDIES 691 supremacy, indeed, was now eclipsed both by San Domingo and by its neighbour in the Windward group, Guadeloupe. The latter, since it lay to leeward, was of less importance strategically than Martinique, but four years of British occupation, during which 40,000 negroes had been imported, had enormously increased the productivity of this fine and fertile island.1 So profitable, indeed, had it already become, that it had been argued that it might be wiser to retain it rather than Canada at the Peace of Paris, more especially as the threat of the French in Canada would help to remind the colonists of their debt to the British Empire. Apart, then, from the comparative decline of Martinique, the French, as the issue of their long-drawn out rivalry with the British in the West Indies, held at this period a position of commercial supremacy. It was a supremacy which slowly but surely waned, and was destined to receive at the close a crushing blow from Rodney. When Bute retired in April 1763, his successor, George Grenville, was soon made aware of the incessant activity with which Choiseul and Grimaldi were intriguing to recover lost possessions. Settlement of points arising out of the treaty was avoided. Among the questions thus kept open by France were those of the demolition of the seaward fortifications of Dunkirk, the liquidation of the bills of credit issued by the French in Canada, and the payment of the sum due for the maintenance of French prisoners of war. The latter point was pressed by Grenville in July 1764, as a test of France's intentions to fulfil the stipulations of the treaty. At this juncture, a French squadron had, under Comte d'Estaing, seized Turk's Island, which was claimed and partly settled by the English. Grenville decided to deal with this and the other matters in dispute with France "by firm and temperate measures, before the fire is lighted in so many parts, and fed with so much fuel, as to make it impossible to extinguish it". Reinforcements were ordered to the West Indies and "preparatory orders" were got ready to be sent to Admiral Burnaby in those parts. The French refused to recall Estaing, but Grenville's firmness compelled them to disavow his action and to promise reparation for damages (August-September 1764). At this very moment Choiseul's agents were investigating the military position in America and reporting that the British troops were so few and scattered as to be of little account, whilst the colonies refused to take steps to protect themselves.5 And at the same time despatches from Lord Rochford, the British ambassador at Madrid, were revealing traces of a plot, concocted by the ministers of the Family Compact, to burn the dockyards of Portsmouth and Plymouth (September 1764 and 25 February 1765). 1 Rodney to Grenville, Grenville Papers, II, II, 12. 2 See Grant, W. L., “Canada versus Guadeloupe", Am. H.R., July 1912, pp. 735 seqq. 3 Grenville Papers, 11, 380, 409-12. 4 Ibid. 11, 418-38. 5 Bancroft, G., Hist. U.S. m, 28; Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 11, 3-5. 6 Printed by Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, III, 298. |