How the French Saved America Read online

  Suitors make allowances for their beloved’s minor faults; Deane sloughed off Coudray’s offensive manner and numerous demands—to be accompanied by his brother-in-law and an entire suite of officers and their servants, all to be lodged in the officers’ quarters on board, and for him to have the title of major general. Deane demurred only at granting the title, explaining that such designations must be awarded by Congress.

  The artillerists were to sail aboard the Amphitrite, one of three ships that Deane and Hortalez & Cie had chartered. The Amphitrite would carry 52 cannons, 32,840 cannonballs, 6,132 rifles, 255,000 flints, and other supplies. Coudray scoured French ports, collecting men and matériel. Saint-Germain signed an order allowing the munitions to be stowed on board, which was done at night.

  Among the other accepted officers eager to sail in the Amphitrite were three veterans. One was a scion of an old family, an artillery expert who had seen battle in Corsica, François Louis-Teissèdre de Fleury, twenty-seven. A second was the cavalry master Augustin Mottin de la Balme, forty-three, who had honed his skills in the Seven Years’ War and was the author of Élémens de tactique pour la cavalerie, a man who had had the signal honor, for a commoner, of presenting the book personally to Louis XVI. The third was Hubert de Preudhomme de Borre, fifty, who had spent his entire life in the military. One junior officer, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, twenty-one, had no military training but was designated an engineer although he was only an architectural student and a protégé of Beaumarchais.

  Just a few aspirants could converse easily in English—because it had been their native language. Colonel Thomas Conway, forty-one, had been born in Ireland but had lived in France since the age of six. He and his brother-in-law, Denis-Jean-Florimond Langlois du Bouchet, twenty-four, also an officer, visited Deane. While Deane offered Conway the major-generalship he had denied Coudray, he would not do the same for du Bouchet. The younger man’s career in the French army had been interrupted twice; first he had to resign over a duel and flee the country, and then, upon his return he found his upward path halted by the exile of the family’s patron, the Duc de Choiseul. He readily agreed to serve as a volunteer in America because he considered himself a “Rousseau republican” who embraced the cause of liberty “with heated passion.”

  Since Deane did not think it proper to be seen at Le Havre, to inspect supplies on the Amphitrite and other ships he sent William Carmichael, a young American. Beaumarchais also went to the port, under a false name, but then blew his cover by directing rehearsals of The Barber of Seville there. Also undermining secrecy were the officers and sailors scheduled to go aboard, overheard in taverns boasting of their cargoes and intended destination. British agents reported to David Murray, Viscount Stormont, the British ambassador in Paris, the number of French officers and the contents of the holds of the Amphitrite and other ships. Stormont, a forceful and wily diplomat, protested to Vergennes, who, following the script set up to assure deniability, told him the ships were headed for Caribbean garrisons.

  Of the dozens of French officers at Le Havre, the highest in nobility was Charles-Armand Tuffin, Marquis de la Rouërie, thirty-five, who after being accepted by Deane had prepared by obtaining letters of credit and introductions to Robert Morris, by bringing three servants and quite a bit of baggage, and by deciding that in America he ought to be called simply Armand. His father’s death when Armand was young had put him in charge of a fortune. He attended the Royal Military Academy alongside others of the high nobility, and afterward, like many of them, served in a court guards unit. In 1766 he fell in love with an opera singer without realizing that she was his uncle’s mistress. His mother’s brother, more bemused than annoyed, brushed away the prospect of a duel, but the young hothead managed to find another to fight, with a cousin of Louis XVI, and for that was exiled. A supplicant to enter an abbey, he was asked whether he was in search of God; no, he responded, just trying to get away from men. He attempted suicide but was rescued. American service beckoned.

  The Baron de Kalb, now fifty-five, also at Le Havre, was the only aspirant who had spent time in the colonies and was able to converse in English. He had written to one of the Americans he had met on his earlier trip “that if the war between England and her colonies … should continue, I could with pleasure devote the rest of my days in the service of your liberty.” He and his commander at Metz, Marshal Victor François de Broglie, fifty-eight, brother of the diplomat, had recently hosted evenings in Paris in honor of Deane, to encourage French officers to apply for commissions.

  De Kalb dutifully reported to Deane from Le Havre on the antics of Coudray and Beaumarchais. Deane’s distress would have deepened had he realized what de Kalb’s own game was: He had secretly pledged to de Broglie to lay the groundwork in America for him to replace Washington as head of the Continental army. De Kalb had explained to Deane that there was a need in America for a man of proven battlefield merit: “A military and political leader is wanted, a man fitted to carry the weight of authority in the colony, to unite its parties, to assign to each his place, to attract a large number of persons of all classes, and carry them along with him, not courtiers, but brave, efficient, and well-educated officers, who confide in their superior, and repose implicit faith in him.” De Broglie and de Kalb believed that the announcement of such a man going to America would have a tremendous positive effect on Europeans, dispelling all their doubts about the Americans’ ability to win the war. Deane did not disagree, but could not pledge what the marshal desired, substantial advance payment for such services. He did sign an employment contract for the baron and fifteen junior officers. They resigned their army positions and went to the docks to await transit to America. De Broglie remained at home to prepare for the summons to supreme command.

  Two years earlier, Marshal de Broglie had been host and superior officer to an even younger marquis, a seventeen-year-old who, after deliberately insulting the king’s brother at court, had been sent to serve at Metz under the marshal, to whom he was distantly related and emotionally indebted. He was Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and his father had died in battle in de Broglie’s arms. In 1774 de Broglie included Lafayette in a dinner at Metz for Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, a younger brother of King George III. No urging for a cause is better done than by a person who has obvious reasons to be against the cause but is not—thus the éclat of the exiled Gloucester when he revealed his sympathy with the American rebels and urged Lafayette and de Broglie to go to America to assist them. Upon Lafayette’s return to Paris and becoming a lieutenant with the Noailles dragoons, he conveyed his excitement at the prospect to two of his best friends, his brother-in-law, Louis-Marie, Vicomte de Noailles, and Philippe-Henri, Marquis de Ségur. All three were close to King Louis XVI in bloodlines, age, and familiarity, having served in court-based regiments and been fellow military academy cadets with the king’s brothers. Secretly the three pledged to one another to join Washington’s army.

  Their enthusiasm and ardor for the American cause had several bases. First, they were more-or-less unemployed: Saint-Germain’s spring 1776 ordinance had ended Lafayette’s active service. But more important, all three young noblemen had thrilled to the championing of individual liberties by Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. Furthering that ideal fused in their minds with the pursuit of gloire (glory), a concept that had become central to the French understanding of the obligations of the noblesse d’épée. Gloire could best be achieved through a combination of proper birth, correct conduct, and battlefield heroics. It required winning the sort of undying combat fame that assured a place in the history books and merited the respect of discerning, noble-born colleagues. “An extreme ardor for gloire devoured my young heart,” du Bouchet would recall. Lafayette, Noailles, and Ségur—as well as du Bouchet, Fleury, and de la Rouërie—believed that achieving gloire was what they owed the rest of humanity for their lives of luxury. As Ségur would explain, “It became impossible not to indulge the hope, however
illusory, held out to us by men of genius [the philosophes], that a period was approaching in which reason, humanity, toleration and freedom would rise above the ruin of popular errors and prejudices, which had so long enslaved the world and deluged it with blood.” But the nobles “only enrolled ourselves under the banners of philosophy in the hope of distinguishing ourselves in the field, and of reaping honors and preferments; in short, it was in the character of heroes of chivalry that we displayed our philosophy.”

  Deane was impressed as much by Lafayette’s marvelous decorum and expansive and optimistic nature as by his wealth and position; although Lafayette was still a teenager, he seemed to have a preternatural ability to lead and was cognizant of the responsibility incurred in leadership. Deane happily granted him, too, a major generalship, and in a recommendation letter to Congress that Lafayette cosigned, referred to “his high Birth, his Alliances, the great Dignities which his Family holds at this Court, his considerable Estates in this Realm, his personal merit, his Reputation, his Disinterestedness, and above all his Zeal for the Liberty of our Provinces.”

  Lafayette, Noailles, and Ségur had no idea that Louis XVI might bar the door. The king had already permitted the resignations of dozens of other army officers so they could go to America. But the council could not permit the abandonment of France by men so close in blood to the king while the government was trying mightily to avoid involving France in a direct war with the enemy of the new country that the young nobles wished to serve. Yet the absence of royal permission was not ultimately what kept Ségur and Noailles from crossing the Atlantic just then—it was money. Their incomes remained in the control of their families, who were opposed to their going. Only Lafayette, steward of one of France’s largest fortunes, could use part of that fortune to charter the Victoire to take him to seek gloire.

  * * *

  The supplies that Washington hoped for from France were most desperately needed. Since his victory in Boston in the spring of 1776, the Continental army’s fortunes had gone rapidly downhill, with severe losses to the British on Long Island, and in New York, Westchester, and New Jersey during the summer and fall. Only Washington’s ingenuity in avoiding wholesale captures of his men kept the American cause alive. When the rebels were occasionally able to employ three or four cannons, as at Pell’s Point (in the present-day Bronx) on October 18, 1776, they could hold off the British; but more often that fall, the Continentals remained significantly undersupplied and were forced to abandon large caches of matériel, thereby making it impossible for Washington even to contemplate sizable counterattacks.

  In mid-December, the fortunes of the Continental army had sunk so low that Washington wrote to his cousin and estate manager, Lund Washington:

  I think the game will be pretty well up, as from disaffection, and want of spirit and fortitude.… Matters to my view, but this I say in confidence to you, as a friend, wears so unfavourable an aspect (not that I apprehend half so much danger from Howes Army, as from the disaffection of the three States of New York, Jersey & Pensylvania) that I would look forward to unfavorable Events, & prepare Accordingly …

  Then he read Paine’s brutally honest letter to the cause, “The American Crisis,” in the Philadelphia Journal, and decided that it could rekindle the flame of liberty in his soldiers. He ordered it read to them. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” it began. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

  To reverse sagging troop morale and Congress’s view of him as too cautious, Washington knew that he needed to take dramatic action, and soon, before the end of the current enlistment period. This propelled him to his most daring military venture: In a raid on Christmas Eve, he and a small band of men crossed the ice-choked Delaware River and surprised and overwhelmed Hessian and British troops to take Trenton. The victory revivified the American cause and his own éclat.

  * * *

  As Washington had been preparing that Delaware crossing, Benjamin Franklin was crossing another Rubicon of sorts, the river Seine, near another capital, Paris. America’s most senior and experienced diplomat, he was being sent to the court of Louis XVI for two linked purposes: to secure French aid for the American cause, and to prevent the British from convincing Louis XVI and his ministers that the American Revolution was near an end and that the colonies would soon be reunited with the mother country. For the aid being sought now by America was far beyond munitions and uniforms. As the Committee of Secret Correspondence was writing to Franklin, Deane, and Lee just then:

  If France desires to preclude the Possibility of North America’s being ever reunited with Great Britain, now is the favourable Moment for establishing the Glory, Strength, and Commercial Greatness of the former Kingdom by the Ruin of her ancient Rival. A decided Part now taken by the Court of Versailles, and a vigorous Engagement in the War in Union with North America, would with Ease sacrifice the Fleet and Army of Great Britain.… The inevitable Consequence would be the quick Reduction of the British Islands in the West Indies, already bared of Defence by the Removal of their Troops to this Continent. For Reasons herein assigned, Gentlemen, you will readily discern, how all important it is to the Security of American Independence, that France should enter the War as soon as may be, and how necessary it is … to procure from her the Line of Battle Ships, you were desired in your Instructions to obtain.

  Franklin’s prior visits to France had been love fests celebrating his scientific achievements, which culminated in his 1772 election as a fellow of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1776 he was still well-enough known in France that he was feted at each stop along the route to the capital. Seventy-one, and accompanied by two young grandsons, he had decided to hype interest in his mission by adding a bit of mystery. He let the public imagine that he might have come to France to retire or to escape debts. “I have not yet taken any publick Character,” he wrote to Hancock, judging it not prudent to do so until he knew “whether the [French] court is ready and willing to receive ministers publicly from the Congress.” Lord Stormont in a report to London dismissed all such mystery: “As [Franklin] is a subtle artful Man, and void of all Truth, He will … use every means to deceive … and will hold out every Lure to the Ministers, to draw them into an open support of [the American] cause.”

  Actually, Franklin had decided on a “publick character.” When last in France he had worn a fine suit and a powdered wig, to fit in at court. This time he would appear in plain clothing and a fur cap, to emphasize that he was a symbol of American virtues and values.

  Franklin’s arrival in Paris was just in time. Deane was writing to John Jay that he was feeling very alone in France, “without Intelligence, without Orders, and without remittances, yet boldly plunging into Contracts, Engagements, &. Negotiations, hourly hoping that someone would arrive from America.”

  Franklin’s presence did more than elate Deane. It began a seminal change in how America related to France. No longer would there be any need for pretense, such as Deane’s cover of appearing to acquire goods for the Indian trade—that had been an appropriate disguise for a purchasing agent of rebelling colonies, but now Franklin, Deane, and Lee were duly authorized commissioners of an independent sovereign state. Their determination to be very direct in their courtship of France shone through the first note that the trio sent to Vergennes, dated December 23, 1776, the day after Franklin reached Paris: “We beg leave to acquaint your Excellency that we are appointed and fully empowered by the Congress of the United States of America to propose and negotiate a Treaty of Amity and Commerce between France and the said States.”

  5

  “The arrival of these great succours raised the spirit of the Rebels.” —Lord Stormont

  In early 1777, after the Amphitrite had been
several days at sea, Coudray had a temper tantrum over food supplies inadequate to a transatlantic voyage and insisted on returning to France, among other reasons to meet Franklin, whose arrival had been rumored on their day of departure. The captain put in at Lorient.

  Deane and Franklin were aghast. The ship’s return to Brittany caused it to fall under the ban on ships departing for America, put in place only days after its first departure, and which had already resulted in the unloading of two other Deane-Beaumarchais ships. While the Amphitrite’s cargo remained on board, Deane pleaded with Vergennes to release the ship and the supplies vital to the American cause. Franklin and Coudray asked Captain Lambert Wickes, forty-one, to inspect it. In the nascent American naval service Wickes was already a star, having successfully delivered Bingham to Martinique in the Reprisal, taking prizes en route, and then having ferried Franklin to France, seizing additional prizes on that journey. Examining the Amphitrite, Wickes “found her So Much Lumbered and Short of Provistion that I think they Did well to put in.” He also recommended lightening its load by leaving behind Coudray’s “most useless officers” and redistributing the weight aboard by having army officers’ servants bunk with the crew. Coudray agreed to remove the sixty-year-old Borre and others, but he also tried to excuse himself from travel in the Amphitrite, a notion that Deane labeled “absurd,” since he was the expert who was traveling with the precious cargo of cannon.

  Beyond pleading for the release of the Amphitrite, the commissioners proffered to Vergennes and to the Spanish ambassador, Aranda, the model treaty sent by Congress. A trade treaty and specifically not a military one, as written by John Adams it insisted on American neutrality toward all nations other than Great Britain, and freedom of the seas and of trade. Many of its paragraphs had been adopted from clauses in European treaties already ratified by long usage, to help position the United States of America as a sovereign nation able to make commercial arrangements with other sovereign nations.