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BEAUMARCHAIS AND DEANE

707 money was spent freely on naval preparations and the defence of the French colonies. Repeated assurances of strict neutrality were made to Great Britain, whilst means were devised for furnishing the Americans with supplies. Two months before the arrival of Deane, Vergennes obtained Louis' reluctant sanction to a loan in the form of a private transaction, which did not commit the Government. The agent selected for this purpose was Beaumarchais. In order to conceal this transaction against a Power to which he was daily pledging his honour that perfect neutrality was being observed, Vergennes employed his son, a lad of fifteen, to write to the author of Figaro.1 When Deane arrived, therefore, he found that he was cast for the part of a merchant doing business with Beaumarchais under an assumed name. The Government had provided the latter with a million livres to found a commercial house and supply the Americans with the munitions of war vital to their cause. The public arsenals were placed at his disposal for the purchase of stores of war. Other commercial houses were similarly supplied with money for a similar purpose. Beaumarchais also obtained, on the recommendation of the French Government, another million livres from the Spanish Treasury.2

Deane, therefore, was soon able to ship large supplies of munitions.3 Nor was this all. Restrictions upon trade were relaxed in favour of American vessels; American privateers were harboured and fitted out, and their prizes sold in French ports; the construction of ships of war for America was carried on under the superintendence of French naval officers. All this was done with the connivance of ministers. The protests of the English ambassador, Lord Stormont, were met with cynical denials of complicity and pretended efforts to prevent the exportation of stores. Vessels laden with arms were stopped and then allowed to escape. Officers who were making their way to America, with the aid of Deane, to fight against the hereditary enemy were formally recalled, but not obliged to return to their regiments. Some prizes brought into French ports were, indeed, restored to the English, but their captors were compensated for their loss. Some who had too openly broken the law were thrown into prison, but they were soon allowed to escape. One of Deane's achievements was to send over from France James Aitken, or "John the Painter" as he was called, a Scottish deserter from the British army in America, to set fire to Portsmouth and other dockyards. Aitken nearly succeeded, but was caught and hanged. The incident recalls the schemes of French and Spanish agents in 1764.

The prolonged successes of the British and the unsatisfactory state of the American army induced Congress to press more urgently for

1 Flassan, vi, 143; American Diplomatic Correspondence, 1, 272 seqq.; Loménie, Beau

marchais, II, 93 seqq.; Adolphus, J., Hist. Eng. II, 309, 429, 439.

2

Vergennes to the King, 2 May 1776 (in Flassan, vII, 149).

Am. Dipl. Corr. 1, 131.

foreign aid. Immediately after the Declaration of Independence, therefore, Benjamin Franklin, the Philadelphia printer who had gained high repute for his scientific discoveries, and had already acted as agent for the colonies in England, was commissioned to join Silas Deane as a secret envoy to France.1 After an adventurous voyage he reached Paris at the end of the year. He was there joined by Arthur Lee from London. The simplicity of their dress and manners, concealing an acute knowledge of men and affairs, the cause of liberty which they invoked, and their enmity to Great Britain caused them to be received with the utmost enthusiasm. But French opinion remained divided as to the advisability of intervention. The desire to tear up the Treaty of Paris and to recover lost possessions was national. But Louis XVI objected to the principle of helping rebels against a Crown, and shrank from the war with England which a recognition of their independence must involve. He was supported by Maurepas and Necker, for the finances of the State were still in a state of chaos. Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, with the Austrian party in France, ardently espoused the cause of American liberty which was one day to recoil upon her own fair head. The idea of liberty had been brought into fashion by the Encyclopaedists. Enthusiasts for religious liberty, like the followers of Voltaire, and enthusiasts for political liberty and equality, who had drunk deep of the heady wine of Rousseau, were eager to fight for a people struggling against an oppressor. Their generous ardour was not cooled by the reflection that the people in question, who had recently declared in such resounding terms that all men were endowed by the Creator with an inalienable right to freedom, were now offering to assist in placing Portugal and the West Indies under a foreign yoke in return for French and Spanish aid, or that their own plantations were cultivated by slaves. French officers, soldiers of fortune and amateurs of liberty, encouraged by the promises of Deane, crowded the ships that sailed for America, and even caused Washington some embarrassment by their very numbers and the high rank to which they were promoted in spite of their ignorance of the language in which they must address their troops.2

Though French intrigue, and subsequently French and Spanish arms, finally succeeded in defeating the British in the contest with the united colonies, it is remarkable that they did not succeed in recovering Canada, that rich jewel which had so recently been torn from the French Crown. The reason is doubtless to be found in the wise provisions of the famous Quebec Act (May 1774). The British Government eschewed the temptation to subject some 70,000 French Roman Catholics to the rule of a few hundred English Protestant settlers. It was thought "more humane" to allow the French to keep the old laws of the province, which they understood, even though in 1 Am. Dipl. Corr. 1, 233. 2 Washington, Works, IV, 146 (Oct. 1776).

THE QUEBEC ACT

709 civil cases that involved trial without jury, and not to force upon them the democratic system which obtained in New England. Religious liberty beyond the mere toleration which had been promised in the Capitulation was granted. Great indignation was caused by these measures among the Whigs at home and the Puritans of New England. Congress protested (September 1774) that this Act, "establishing despotic Government and the Popish religion", must be repealed. In effect it gave greater liberty, better administration and ampler prosperity than the ultra-military form of government which it supplanted. The result was that, when the Americans invaded Canada in 1775, the Canadians remained loyal to Great Britain. They had no sympathy with New England republicanism, the New England creed, or the New England character. The invasion of Canada under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold ended in complete failure.

Eager to wound, and yet afraid to strike, the French Government continued to supply the Americans with money and munitions, whilst Vergennes assured Lord Stormont of their peaceful intentions, as sincerely as Cardinal Fleury had been wont to make the same assurances to Lord Waldegrave, and Choiseul to Lord Shelburne. He added-and possibly with truth-that he was far from wishing for the independence of the colonies, because that would end in their not permitting any European Power to occupy a foot of land in America. Franklin was soon able to announce that large supplies of guns and other military stores were being shipped under convoy of a French man-of-war. Means were also provided for supplying and refitting American cruisers in French ports. But the American commissioners were not content with such surreptitious aid. They urged the acknowledgment of the United States and the conclusion of treaties of commerce and alliance between the old Monarchy and the new Republic, offering in return to assist in the conquest of the British Sugar Islands. Nothing, it was felt, could save their cause at this critical juncture but foreign intervention. Foreign intervention, however, could not be vouchsafed until some striking military success had lessened the probability of the defeat or reconciliation of the colonies. In November Vergennes informed the commissioners that perhaps the King would lend Congress another million livres and try to persuade his brother of Spain to do the same. He might take off their hands the ship which they had ordered in Holland, but could not pay for or get safely to France. More than this they must not expect until the colonists had obtained some important victory.

The attitude of Spain was even less encouraging. Lee was sent thither to raise the wind and to tempt the Spaniards into the war by offering to assist them in obtaining Pensacola, and also in their war with Portugal. This war was already causing embarrassment to Great Britain as the ally of Portugal, and was accordingly encouraged by

1 Franklin, B., Letter to Congress, 8 Dec. 1776.

the French. It was occasioned by the ill-defined boundaries of the South American colonies about the Rio Grande de San Pedro; by Spanish delays in fulfilling the treaty of 1763, by which the status quo of the Portuguese colonies in America was to be restored; and by the vicinity of the settlements of the two nations on the Rio de la Plata. Aggressions by the government of Buenos Aires answered and provoked aggressions by the government of the Brazils. Open hostilities were begun by the Portuguese on the Rio Grande. Both parties appealed to their allies, Spain to France, Portugal to Great Britain. But while negotiations were proceeding through them, an expedition sailed from Cadiz, which first seized the island of Sta Catherina on the coast of Brazil (February 1777) and then St Gabriel and the colony of Sacramento. These operations, being followed by the fall of Pombal on the death of Joseph I, King of Portugal, enabled Florida Blanca to negotiate the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777).1 By it the limits of Peru, Paraguay and Brazil were fixed. Spain not only gained Sacramento and great advantages for the military and commercial development of Buenos Aires, but also secured the valuable friendship of Portugal in the coming war with Great Britain. The Spanish court, however, was not as yet prepared for such a war, nor had it the least sympathy with republican ideas. It saw no attraction in fighting to establish a homogeneous, independent Power which would constitute a threat to Spanish possessions beyond the Mississippi. Nor was it obvious why a country which retained so large a colonial empire and was the chief exponent of that system of commercial monopoly, which the triumph of the United States seemed likely to break down, should encourage colonists to revolt. Lee, therefore, met with a cool reception in Spain, though he was granted a sum of money for the purchase of military stores which were shipped from Bilbao.2

General Burgoyne's early successes had filled the American envoys with anxiety almost amounting to despair. But on I December 1777 came the news of the capture of his army at Saratoga. It was, said Deane, like a cordial to the dying. That resounding success at once removed all hesitation at Versailles. On 17 December the American commissioners were officially informed that the King was prepared to recognise the independence of the United States and to enter into a treaty of commerce with them. If such recognition should involve war with Great Britain, no compensation would be asked. Any reaction in favour of the British which might have been aroused by fear of France regaining Canada was thereby avoided.

After seven weeks of negotiation a treaty of commerce was signed, 6 February 1778, and on the same day a treaty of alliance, the provisions of which were to come into force if, as was inevitable, Great

1 Coxe, III, 381-95; Martens, Recueil des traités, 1, 634; Silva, Historia de Portugal; Becatini, F., Storia del regno di Carlo III, p. 289; St Paul of Ewart, Correspondence, п, 330-97. Franklin, Works, vIII, 209; Lecky, Hist. of Eng. in Eighteenth Century, IV, 5.

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FRANCO-AMERICAN TREATY, 1778

711

Britain should break the peace. The latter treaty provided that any of the remaining British territories on the continent of America, of which the Americans should gain possession, should be retained by them, whilst France should keep any of the British islands in or near the Gulf of Mexico which she might conquer.1 The treaties were kept secret for some weeks in the hope that Spain might join in them. But it was, indeed, wholly contrary to the wishes and counsels of Spain that France had committed herself and it was only in June of the following year that the naval and military position tempted her to declare war.

Lord Stormont had kept ministers well informed of what was happening. On 28 December 1777 he had announced secret comings and goings between Franklin, Deane and M. Gérard. "I have not a shadow of doubt", he wrote, "that this Court and that of Madrid are combined against us and have long been preparing for the execution of some invidious design. I look upon the assistance they give the rebels as but a small part of their plan....Their naval force is already more than sufficient for every purpose of defence, and yet they are continually increasing it. Mr Necker's last arrêt expressly avows an intended augmentation....Where the first blow will be aimed I cannot say, but am inclined to think it will be in the West Indies." It was his view that French and Spanish support of the Americans was given in the hope of exhausting Great Britain and that they would be enabled to strike some sudden, unexpected blow at her colonial Empire. On the night of 6 February he wrote that the treaty "between this Court and the rebels was actually signed", though the fact was stoutly denied by both Maurepas and Vergennes. On 13 March, however, negotiations with Spain having failed, the Marquis de Noailles announced to Lord Weymouth the signature of the treaties, acknowledging the full independence of the United States and, with scarcely veiled insolence, inviting His Britannic Majesty to prevent their commerce with France from being interrupted. Stormont was promptly recalled from Paris, and the war began.

Steps were now taken in France to put into execution those plans for the invasion of England which, as we have seen, had been prepared on the morrow of the Peace of Paris. The retirement of the Comte d'Estaing from Rhode Island, and his campaigns in the West Indies, seemed to show that the eyes of France were naturally directed towards those sugar islands which, if captured, were to remain hers. It was probably no part of her plan to bring the war to a conclusion before some such conquests had been made. Estaing's indiscreet appeal to the Canadians not "to bear the arms of parricides against their mother-country" also heightened the suspicion of the Americans

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1 Flassan, vii, 149, 167; Martens, п, 701; Loménie, Beaumarchais, 11, 158-60, 559–66. Mahon, Lord, Hist. Engl. vi, Appendix, p. xxi.

3 Duc de Broglie, The King's Secret, II, 518.

• Annual Register, 1779, p. 355.

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