how did the french alliance contribute to the american revolution

Had France lost the race for American friendship? The first move was to eliminate Franklin and Deane by creating a scandal in Congress about their peculation of public funds. He refused, when his mission was over, to return to his once beloved Paris. To gain time, he placated Stormont by arresting the three Wickes vessels (which kept them safe from the British warships on patrol) and by promising that the new cutter being fitted for Conyngham would be sold. But his most important work was with the new firm of Hortalez & Company, which really meant the House of Bourbon. 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. The bogus company functioned as a legitimate business house, paying cash for its purchases and keeping its connection with Versailles a secret even from the American leaders. Arthur was installed in the place where he could counteract Deane and that wicked old man, as R. H. Lee called Franklin. Like the first conflict of that name, it was a period of intermittent warfare and political and economic rivalry between the two powers. The Sugar Act, was made to try and stop the smuggling of sugar and molasses. The Americans' victory over the British may have been one of the greatest catalysts for the French Revolution. In 1776, Louis XVI was just 22 years old and had been king for only two years. How Did The French Indian War Contribute To The American Revolution He agreed to investigate the matter. 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. He made this gesture impressive by sending two sloops of war to Dunkirk to take the captain and his men and deliver them to the local jail. Franklin was a shrewd judge of men, and his unclouded confidence in Bancroft needs some extraordinary explanation. That switched him to the Caribbean trade. In the matter of the Hortalez ships, it was Vergennes who had yielded. Deane and Beaumarchais were already fast friends, working in harmony to load the Hortalez fleet with war supplies. At Passy Bancroft was a loved and trusted figure, and Vergennes so admired him that after the war he sent Bancroft on a highly confidential mission to Ireland. Question 5. The providence which was evidently favoring the American cause got the rest of the fleet safely to the mainland except the Seine , which the British captured after she had unloaded part of her cargo on Martinique. And Franklin, Voltaire, and Rousseau were linked together as the presiding geniuses of the century. George Washington - Revolutionary leadership | Britannica The French Revolution (1789-1799) - SparkNotes It encouraged the French to adopt the government system of popular sovereignty. The exhibit traces the American naval effort in its three components: the Continental Navy, state navies, and privateers. If General Howe had guessed that, he could have ended the war then and there. First these navies quarreled head-on, in the English Channel and then in the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean, in a war of escorts. He made for the English Channel, where he took four small merchantmen, which he sent to Lorient under prize masters. Britain won the Seven Years War and imposed the Peace of Paris which bred the next cycle of conflict with the Continental powers. He helped Beaumarchais buy and fit out eight ships, prudently scattered in various ports: the, Amphitrite, Mercure, Flammand, Mre Bobie, Seine, Thrse, Amelia, Delays which were not the fault of Deane and Beaumarchais held up most of the fleet for months after lading. This blogpost looks at the important French role in the American Revolution. However, when Franklin arrived in Paris, Bancroft was in an ideal position to watch the Kings most dangerous enemy, and he made a good bargain with the secret service. Carmichael, who was still the liaison man between Passy and Dunkirk, found an obliging British subject as the ostensible purchaser of the Revenge , and while he was about it he sold the Surprise to a French buyer and sent her around to Nantes to join the privateer fleet. The alliance of France with the American Patriots started on February 6, 1778, when the King of France signed a treaty with Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. This was the same thing as asking France and Spain to declare immediate war against Great Britain. Since France and Spain were not responding to the offer of a trade alliance, he raised his sights and proposed what amounted to a military one. Almost consciously Lee longed for that consummation. Franklin knew what he had won for his beloved country. Lack of food. She had stolen Hollands priority on the seas and had swept France from the American continent and the best part of her fisheries. Bancroft was in a balky mood but finally gave the desired information: Spain was not ready for a war with England. The French Connection - Statue Of Liberty National Monument (U.S Chapter 4 History Test Flashcards | Quizlet Franklin had a share in preserving the friendship between the mainland and Bermuda at a moment when it was severely strained. America needed French aid of every sort: ships, supplies, loans, to begin with. Soon the old names were changed to the Committee of Foreign Affairs and the Commercial Committee to make this distinction clear. 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. Despite his own best efforts, Lees mission turned out to be a success. On July 23 he wrote a memoir to Louis XVI declaring that the moment had come when France must resolve either to abandon America or to aid her courageously and effectively. He urged a closer alliance to prevent a reunion of Britain and America. Tom Morris was dragging out the last months of his wretched life, and Lee saw no point in beating a dead horse. To forestall a truce with Britain, the ministers had stipulated that the United States must make no peace that surrendered her independence. Copyright 1949-2022 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. French Empire wanted to take revenge on the British Empire for its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). 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. Even Vergennes was now lukewarm. It was an entirely new sort of war because the United States was a new sort of country, whose survival depended less on land fighting than on a complex of factors in which Franklin was . This period of conflict began in 1698 with the War of the Grand . When they arrived at Martinique, the Americans were so cordially received that Bingham settled down as resident agent for Congress. answer choices. The Revolution precipitated a series of European wars, forcing the United States to articulate a clear policy of neutrality in order to avoid being embroiled in these European conflicts. He was free for a time to be the scientist, finding in nature a fidelity to laws beyond the reach of human meddling. For months, in fact, Franklin and Deane had slipped away in the evening for conferences with the minister, and Lee spread the word that the Doctor was having an affair with some French beauty. It thus comprises the first seven years of the period of warfare that was continued through the Napoleonic Wars until Napoleon's abdication in 1814, with a year of interruption under the peace of Amiens (1802-03). Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain's position in the New World. READ: The Atlantic Revolutions (article) | Khan Academy 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. Vergennes had patiently dissembled Frances violations of neutrality in one encounter after the other with Stormont. With great fanfare Lee proposed to make Prussia a second France. The King was tireless, and only the quirks and massive stubbornness which were part of his psychosis would now and then hamper the working of his great information machine. This move had been made after Franklin left Philadelphia, and the bad news would not reach Paris for months. He was never suspected by anybody but Arthur Lee, who suspected everybody but his own secretaries, who were almost invariably British agents. He closeted himself with Silas Deane, who had now been in France for six months on a dual mission for the two secret committees and had a tremendous budget of news. was a war only between the French and the Native Americans. Vergennes too recognized the subtle strategy behind the cruises, and he was coming to the decision that war could not be postponed much longer. In France, however, this separation of function was impossible. Intended as a defensive alliance, it saw France provide both supplies . French involvement in the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1783 began in 1776 when the Kingdom of France secretly shipped supplies to the Continental Army of the Thirteen Colonies when it was established in June 1775. American Revolution - Treaty of Alliance (1778) - ThoughtCo With the appointment of the mission to France the affairs of the two secret committees were theoretically unscrambled; the commissioners were to take charge of foreign relations, and young Tom Morris of commercial matters. France had 26 battleships ready, and by spring Spain would have thirty. Islanders and continentals had worked out a prototype of the free trade which was one of Franklins major objectives. It happened that Americas greatest Spanish friend, the merchant Don Diego Gardoqui of Bilbao, was in Madrid at the moment, and he was called into consultation. American merchantmen picked up contraband all over Europe; the British, Dutch, and French sent some cargoes direct to the thirteen colonies, but far greater amounts to their islands in the Caribbean, to be picked up by American traders. In mid-November George III, who had no intention of starting a war with France, decided it would be useful to know the Spanish plans and sent Paul Wentworth to Paris to find out how Charles III stood. France and Great Britain were cutthroat enemies. He was the dark personality of the family: a paranoid constantly haunted by the most fantastic suspicions of the people around him; a captious, hypercritical man who never married or made a simple friendship; a man with inflated notions of his own Tightness and genius who suffered tortures of jealousy of anybody above him. All the colonizing powers tried to keep New World produce flowing home to the motherland. 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. From May, 1777, to May, 1778, Congress would receive no direct word from its mission in Paris. On February 6, 1778, Benjamin Franklin was in France signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. Patrick Henry delivering his famous speech on the Rights of the Colonies, before the . He was a young man of complete integrity and far from ordinary gifts, whom Franklin could well have used in Paris. Because of the Family Compact, Spain would have to approve the alliance with America, and accordingly Vergenness memoir was sent to Madrid with its proposal for a triple offensive and defensive alliance. The Role of France in the American Revolutionary War - ThoughtCo The American Revolution - US History Scene Captain Wickes, who had been one of the picked men of Morris trading fleet, was chosen for the voyage. Arthur Lee, who would have ruined the secret project if he had been in Paris to interfere with it, was busy elsewhere. Little Benny Bache would be put in school to learn French, and Temple Franklin would act as his grandfathers unpaid secretary. This theft was not discovered until the pouch was opened in America and proved to contain nothing but the blank paper substituted by Hynson. The time had come to invite Wentworth in. Since Wentworth often slipped across to Paris, much of Bancrofts information could be delivered verbally, but he made a weekly report in writing. New York: Random House, 2015. The new physiocratic school had its followers on both sides of the Atlantic. No man of his century could approach Franklin as a subtle and effective propagandist.