how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

He was overimpressed with titles and high connections and had made the serious blunder of sending a stream of idle young aristocrats overseas to serve under Washington. With a fur cap on his unwigged gray head, Franklin took up his studies of the Gulf Stream where he had dropped them on his voyage home from England. 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 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. Grimaldi told him that the King was presenting the Americans stores of arms, clothing, and blankets which their ships could pick up at New Orleans and Havana. This was the germ of the deliberate policy Franklin and Deane pursued during 1777: to create such an open scandal about French connivance in American raids that it could not be effervesced in private conversations between Stormont and Vergennes. Wentworth recruited Bancroft into the service and supervised his work in Paris closely, never quite sure of his loyalty to England. These were led by Libertadores - like Simn . He was the Edward Edwards of the secret service, the master spy of the century. (One factor, the actual fighting on land, would make up the bulk of future histories. 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. At the moment, Nantes was all, The American was adulated, wined and dined. Later Lee developed this fantasy into a sinister engine of destruction against those he hated. Yet, it represented much more to those individuals who proposed the gift. The French Revolution was influenced by the experiences and systems of other nations. In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. 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. France Allied with American Colonies. 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. It is true that these countries, and to some extent Spain, had for some time been shipping out contraband for America, mostly through their Caribbean islands. The arms of which Doniol speaks had long since been amassed, and it seems probable that Dubourg and Vergennes discussed other matters. So too was our want of guns, supplies, and everything needed in a war against one of the major powers of the earth. France remains the center of political activity, and here, therefore, I should choose to be employed., He went on to suggest how Franklin and Deane might be erased altogether. Friends, and in French, amis! As for the French islands, the Cape developed into a prime source for munitions, and Martinique became an American privateer base before Franklin sailed. Sixty years after his death the incredible truth came out. What thus started as an acknowledged business arrangement was twisted by Arthur Lee into a fantasy which better suited his private purposes, all directed toward immortalizing Arthur Lee. DuVal, Kathleen. If General Howe had guessed that, he could have ended the war then and there. On the third day of May he seized the Prince of Orange and brought her into Dunkirk, along with a British brig picked up on the way. French Empire wanted to take revenge on the British Empire for its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). France aided the colonists by providing military armaments and loans. The dreadful thing is that Arthur Lees nightmare was accepted by perfectly sane men and that it not only outlived the Eighteenth Century but has persisted in a shadowy form into the Twentieth. Read more >>, The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. Franklin had already urged that France and Spain conclude treaties of amity and commerce with the United States, and his letter went farther, offering these powers a firm guarantee of their present possessions in the West Indies, plus any new islands they conquered in a war growing out of their aid to the United States. 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. 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. 1. He waited until the Revenge was safely out of Dunkirk, and then he and the commissioners exchanged letters, purely to clear the record, about the necessity of France abiding by her treaties, which meant no more violations by American privateers. 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 the, In a few swift parries Franklin suggested what his technique of dealing with the ministry would be. A growing fleet of American privateers had already brought prizes into the various French ports, and a system had been perfected for their disposal. A clever negotiator could have done much there, for Frederick the Great despised the British and the little German states that sold them mercenaries; he took a lively interest in the progress of the American war and was ready to expand Prussias trade with the Americans, which so far had been clandestine. It began with the bold request that France sell the United States eight ships of the line, completely manned . Most of them were of no earthly use to the Commander in Chief and drained an impoverished Congress of money and patience. 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. Late in May Captain Wickes made a cruise quite around Ireland in company with two other captains and captured eighteen small vessels. 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. Franklin and Deane were at the top of that long list. By 1763, France had suffered a crushing defeat in the Seven Years' War (more commonly called the "French and Indian War" in the U.S.), losing all its claims to mainland Canada and the Louisiana Territory. France and Great Britain were cutthroat enemies. Some inner mechanism in the Lee genes transmuted whatever was wrong with the Lees into something much worse that was wrong with their enemies. His contract with Wentworth gave him 500 down, the same amount as yearly salary, and a life pension. The story goes that he was rushing to play the stock market, and no doubt he was. 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. All George III had to offer his erring children, who would of course return to colonial status, was the repeal of the obnoxious acts since 1763, which had precipitated the war. With Deane and Carmichael, and all those shadowy young Americans who helped the great privateering drive of 1777, he organized an underground system for escapes. The Doctor, instead of staying with the Montaudoins, allowed himself to be captured by people he disliked. 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. As a past master in the art of making the other man feel that he was acting solely for him, Vergennes recognized this basic technique in diplomacy. As for the Reprisal , anchored at Lorient, she suddenly sprang a leak, and international usage allowed a ship in distress harbor privileges until she was fit to sail. George III was uneasy about both Americans because they gambled wildly in stocks and kept mistresses. Moreover, orders would be given for British warships to seize the French fishing fleet daily expected from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The glorious news of General Gatess victory at Saratoga reached Passy about the first of December, 1777, by a Charleston ship, and on the fourth it was confirmed by Jonathan Loring Austin, secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War, who had rushed to France in a specially chartered vessel. Louis XVI, preparing for the war with England which Vergennes assured him was inevitable whether or not he aided the Americans, had ordered the Navy rebuilt and the Army re-equipped. Despite his own best efforts, Lees mission turned out to be a success. The memoir to Vergennes asked for a French loan of 2,000,000 (which Congress had hopefully requested) . When the royal nod transmogrified Beaumarchais into Roderigue Hortalez, he wrote Lee over that signature, announcing the formation of his house and his intended shipments to the Cape, to be paid for by remittances of American tobacco. When Deane left Philadelphia on his mission to France, Franklin suggested that Edward Bancroft would be a useful consultant on European affairs, and so it proved. The British had many other secret agents in France, and other avenues of information. By April American privateers had taken so many British seamen prisoner that the British fleet was not half manned, and Stormont hinted to Vergennes that peace could not last much longer if France continued to arm the United States. Vergennes would promise to investigate the matter, which meant that Stormont had lost a point. The Bahamas, too, acted as allies. After Lees visit he proffered no more aid and listened to Floridablanca. America could fight only her own sort of war on the seas, and this had started before Lexington and would continue long after Yorktown. They asked that frigates be sent over by August to cruise against Englands Baltic trade and attack the British Isles. Americans were at first enthusiastic in support of the revolution. 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. Like a good diplomat, he conveyed these urgent demands to the ministries in a most persuasive form, but he had already gauged the situation in the royal courts and expected no miracles.

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