France in the American revolution

Preface

This book, the latest fruit of Mr. Perkins's longcontiuued devotion to studies in the history of France, was practically complete at the time of its author's death in March, 1910. In preparing the manuscript for the press Mrs. Perkins has been greatly assisted by Dr. John Franklin Jameson of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions ; by Professor Charles Halstead Van Tyne of the University of Michigan, who has verified all the references and made other important suggestions ; by Mr. George B. Ives of the Riverside Press, who has made the index ; and by other gentlemen connected with that press, who have been most helpful in all stages of the publication of the work. To all these Mrs. Perkins desires to express thankful appreciation.

She finds great satisfaction in being able to give the book to the public substantially as Mr. Perkins left it. The work of final revision, which fell to her, has been done with that appreciation of the author's intention and with that unf^ ' .standing of his habits of thought and expression which no other editor could have brought to the task. To the wide circle of the author's personal and literary acquaintance, the editor has done great service with rare success.

Rush Rhees.

Contents

Introduction ix

I. France and the New World .... 3

II. The Treaty of Paris and its Consequences 21

Introduction

On Friday the 6th of February, 1778, plenipotentiaries met in Paris to sign a treaty for which there had been no precedent in history, and of which there has been no imitation since. Three of them represented a government that was independent only in its own estimation ; they were called Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee, and we're delegates of the new-born " United States of North America"; the fourth represented the oldest monarchy in Europe, and was Conrad Gerard de Rayneval, destined to be later the first diplomat ever accredited to America.

Article II of the treaty provided that " the essential and direct end of the present defensive alliance is to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty and independence absolute and unlimited of the said United States." By other articles France pledged herself not to lay down her arms until this independence had been achieved, and, whatever be the delay, cost, or losses, to neither claim nor accept anything for the help thus provided. She even specifically consented that the harshest of the conditions of the 1763 treaty of peace with England be maintained : if conquests were made " in the northern part of America," the conquered land would be annexed to the United States, and not to the country which had settled Canada and possessed it until that peace.

A treaty of commerce had been signed on the same day, and in the same spirit, France reserving for herself no advantage but subscribing an agreement

X INTRODUCTION

to which any nation, England included, would be welcome to be a party when it chose. Fiance, wrote Franklin, has " taken no advantage of our present difficulties to exact terms which we would not willingly grant when established in prosperity and power." France, grumbled Mr. de Floridablanca, prime minister of Spain, when the treaties were read to him, " is acting like Don Quixote."

The treaties signed on the 6th of February, 1778, were certainly unprecedented. So much so that, in some minds, and for a long time (in that of John Adams, for example, to the last), doubts remained. Was that really possible ? Were there no secret articles? No, there were none. Would France keep her word, and, if success was attained, reserve for herself nothing on a continent two thirds of which had been hers ? She would, and did, keep her word. Even Washington had had his doubts and had wondered when, time and again, plans were submitted to him for an action in Canada, whether there was not in them " more than the disinterested zeal of allies " (Nov. 11, 1778). The event proved that such fears were groundless.

Extraordinary events have extraordinary causes. This was a unique one ; how did it come about ?

The answer will be found in the volume to which the finishing touches were being put by Mr. James Breck Perkins when death removed him from the place he so worthily filled among lovers of historical studies, and from Congress, where his sense, experience, and wisdom as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs will long be remembered. There are in his book no better chapters than those in which he makes clear what took place and why.

INTRODUCTION XI

Two principal motives explain what happened : a chief one which has usually been more or less neglected, and a secondary one to which historians usually give the foremost place.

The latter is the obvious one of France's animosity / against her old enemy, Great Britain, the winner at the Plains of Abraham, the deviser of the harsh conditions of 1763. But because it is obvious and needs neither research nor even thought to be put forth, that has often been alleged as the chief, if not the unique, motive for what took place. Two distinct influences, in fact, acted together to bring about the alliance of France with the New Republic : that of statesmen and that of the nation. Among certain statesmen, as among many officers, the desire for reprisals was a potent factor, and the rebellion of the colonies was welcomed, chiefly because they rebelled against England. Among the French people at large it was quite otherwise : the rebellious colonies were popular, not especially because they wanted to throw off an English yoke, but because they wanted to throw off a yoke.

It must not be forgotten that the period of the War of Independence was not coincident with one of Anglophobia in France, but on the contrary with one of Anglomania. Everything English was admired, and, when possible, imitated : manners, literature, philosophy, sport, parliamentary institutions, and above all, writes one of the earliest French supporters of the colonists, Segur, " the liberty, at once calm and lofty, enjoyed by the entire body of the citizens of Great Britain " ; Frenchmen " were crazy about the English institutions." It was the period when people would go to London in order to " learn how to become thinkers,"

xii INTRODUCTION

and to learn also how the stiff rules of old should be discarded, whether the matter was of the laying out of a garden, of the government of empires, or the writing of a tragedy. The year of the Proclamation of Independence was also the one during which the complete works of Shakespeare, translated by LeTourneur, took Paris by storm, and were published by subscrip- *tion, the King and Queen heading the list. " All the youth of Paris is for Le Tourneur," wrote indignant Voltaire.

The anti-English sentiment existed indeed only within somewhat narrow limits. Even among military men that sentiment was not a universal one : examining the causes why so many young officers, and he himself among them, longed to play a part in the great struggle, Segur enumerates the usual motives, such as a " desire of glory and of rank," the service due to the King and country, and concludes that, above all, they were impelled "by a yet more exalted prin- J ciple, a sincere enthusiasm for the cause of American liberty." Of a desire to humble the old enemy not a word: people were rushing "to the field of battle," says he further, " in the name of philanthropy."

Liberty, philanthropy, natural rights, those were the magic words that were then stirring not only writers and thinkers, but the very masses in France. The day of unbending dogmatism and heavy yokes had passed ; privileges subsisted, but had scarcely any defenders left ; the aspirations were immense for a greater equality, more breathing space, simpler lives, more accessible knowledge, free discussion of common interests. Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, the encyclopedists, had said their say ; it had sunk deep into the nation's mind. Those who could read had read

INTRODUCTION xiii

the books, the others had been talked to about them. The power of public opinion and of illiterate masses had wonderfully increased, more even perhaps than . is shown in the present work. Peace had not yet been signed at Versailles when Necker published his epoch-making " Compte Rendu," enabling the whole nation to be judge of its own interests ; peace had just been signed when he printed his " Administi'ation des Finances de la France," of which, in spite of the opposition of his successors in oiBfice, eighty thousand copies were sold. The days indeed were not far off when the nation would show that it had ideas of its own, and would draw the famous Cahiers of 1789, some being compiled by mere peasants who offered excuses for their rough mountaineers' orthography.

Add to this that, while old ideas, old rules, the old Regime in its entirety, were losing ground, youthful enthusiasm and ardor pervaded the nation. Two years before American Independence was proclaimed, the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot tells us of the effect on the French public of " those general and ex- / aggerated maxims that fire the enthusiasm of youths and would make them run to the world's end, and abandon father, mother, brother, to come to the assistance of an Esquimau or a Hottentot."

Now the time had come to run to the world's end and, like La Fayette, leave wife, child, and the pleasures of an easy life, for something greater indeed than the fate of any Hottentot. What was at stake was in fact what the French of the new generation held dearest. All the reports that came concerning Americans showed them lovers of liberty, practisers of equality, accepting no privileges, tolerant of all creeds, leading honorable and simple lives, in their poetic solitudes.

xiv INTRODUCTION

Deane, Lee, and Franklin appear in Paris, and seem " sages, contemporaries with Plato, or republicans of the age of Cato and of Fabius " (S^gur). In the eyes of Voltaire the insurgents are animated by the truest philosophical principles, they fight for " reason and liberty." The constitutions of the principal states are translated into French a little later under the supervision of Franklin, and the admiration is unanimous for those " charters of liberty." French officers leave Versailles, the soldiers leave their villages and their garrison towns : what they find on reaching America fulfills, in most cases, their anticipation. They prove friendly judges ; what they observed is thus described by one of them : " Indigence and brutality were nowhere to be seen ; fertility, comfort and kindness were everywhere to be found ; and every individual displayed the modest and tranquil pride of an independent man who feels that he has nothing above him but the laws."

No wonder, when all this is considered, that French public opinion was wrought up to the highest pitch and that it played, as it did, a decisive part in the grand drama. The animosity against England still harbored by some statesmen and soldiers in this period of Anglomania, would never have achieved the momentous results that were at stake. The King hesitated, his ministers (Vergennes excepted) fell into periodical doubts ; Necker, who held the purse-strings, was a confirmed Anglophile ; official reports on America were not all as rose-colored as the private letters of a La Fayette, a Segur, or a Chastellux. But public opinion never wavered. " During the five years that the war continued," says Mr. Perkins, " the French people remained constant in the cause." " On all sides,"

INTRODUCTION XV

-wrote that same good jiulge, Segur, " public opinion urged a regal government to declare itself in favor of republican liberty, and even murmured at the irresolution and delay. The ministers gradually yielding to the torrent were, at the same time, alarmed at the prospect of a ruinous war."

Ruinous it was indeed, costing the French treasury seven hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars; ^ but public opinion remained faithful to the struggling states. The people groaned under the weight of taxation, but never grumbled at the expense for such a cause. Peace came, France kept her word ; she did not try to recover any of her possessions on the American continent ; she made a pro-American peace, not an anti-English one. Public opinion again was fully satisfied : what it wanted had been secured ; there were no protests against the moderation shown towards the adversary ; the joy was universal. Years after the war the same pro- American feelings which had apparently taken deep root still prevailed, as shown by the French National Assembly's adjourning at the news of the death of Franklin ; the French army going into mourning at the death of Washington, and the glowing eulogies of the new republic still sent home by its French visitors. Talleyrand came to America in 1794, so as to become acquainted, he says, with " that great country whose history now begins." His impressions are most favorable to a people " that shall one day be a great people, the wisest and happiest on earth." He observes, it is true, in 1797, that the bulk of the trade goes to England, so that " Independence, far from having been hurtful, has proved, in many respects, helpful to that country." But he ob- 1 See page 498.

xvi INTRODUCTION

serves this with perfect equanimity. "Americans," writes General Moreau, in 1806, from Philadelphia, " are good people. . . . Their progress in trade and navigation is truly wonderful. . . . One enjoys in their country the most boundless liberty, and there is no abuse. . . . Men who have lived under such a government will never allow themselves to be shackled again."

On all this, the author of the present work has much to say that should be remembered, and never, perhaps, has the question of how and why what happened could take place, been so clearly put before the American reader. The existence of an anti-English feeling in certain French milieus is not denied and it receives no less than its due in the first chapters. But the other side of the question is then placed in such •full light that few readers will fail to agree with Mr. Perkins's conclusion that " public opinion became, at Y ( the last, the most potent factor in controlling the decision of the French government. ... It was the popular enthusiasm for American liberty which penetrated the council chamber and influenced the ministers in their decision, even if they failed to recognize such a motive." *

Those views are the worthier of notice since Mr. Perkins never allows himself to be led astray by enthusiasm or sentimentality. No excessive indulgence marks his judgments on men or deeds, be they French or American. This probity in his views is on a par with the austerity of his style, an austerity which, far from deadening, enhances, on the contrary, the dramatic interest, and the romantic charm, not to say the poetry of the events.

INTRODUCTION xvii

Once more, under this trusty guide, the reader follows, scene by scene, the progress of the momentous drama, with its alternatives of success and defeat, fights by land and by sea, lucky or fruitless negotiations, fleets crossing and recrossing the ocean, cities taken and lost, great New York impregnable with its fortincations and its eleven thousand English and Hessian regulars, the key, as it seemed, of a situation that was in reality to be decided under the bastions of a small borough along the Chesapeake. Before us appear soldiers and sailors of fame : Wayne, Greene, Rochambeau, d'Estaing, de Grasse, Paul Jones, La Fayette, the grand image of Washington towering above all the rest ; but room is found for many others great and small, evoked before the reader in the clear light of the author's lucid style : circumspect and steady Vergennes, who favored the insurgents from the first, and remained to the last " consistent and upright," Gerard and La Luzerne, my cool-headed predecessors, impetuous Beaumarchais, who has his statue in Paris for that product of his brain, " Figaro," and deserves a memorial in America too for that other product of his brain, " Hortalez and Co." The hard pilgrimage is told us of American negotiators sent by an optimistic congress " to various European courts, but few of them were received," * and they secured, at best, promise of friendship for the time when the danger should be over. " The affairs of the colonies," wrote Frederick II to one of his ministers, " are yet in too great a crisis ; so long as their independence is not more firmly established, all immediate commerce under my flag seems to me too perilous and fraught with too great inconveniences for me to run such risks."

1 See pag-e 221.

xviii INTRODUCTION

He thought however that the French would do well to run any risks, and, at the time when they had not yet taken sides, expressed himself as shocked at their "pusillanimity."

France and the States went their way, which led them to Yorktown and to one of the most honorable treaties of peace ever concluded : so honorable because it was so just and moderate.

In a sort of postscript Mr. Perkins carries the story down almost to our own days, recalling the difference of feeling toward America which, for well-known causes, existed in France, between the Imperial Government and the nation, at the time of the War of Secession. Once more on the eve of a transformation accompanied by terrible woes, the nation manifested how eagerly her wishes went to the maintenance of the then only great republic ; a popular subscription was opened (of two cents per head, so that the poorest might take part) for a medal to be struck in commemoration of the life and death of Lincoln, " honest man," as the inscription reads, " who abolished slavery, reestablished the Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the statue of Liberty."

In the midst of the conflicting judgments passed on the part played by France in the War of Independence, from that of Mr. de Floridablanca, who considered us quixotic, to those of Jay or Adams, who could never believe that we had no concealed plans, posterity will probably ratify the conclusions of Mr. Perkins's whole study, well condensed by him in the following admirable words : " The arguments on which statesmen based their action were not justified in the future. But the instincts of the French nation were right : they assisted a people to gain their free-

INTRODUCTION xix

dom, they took part in one of the great crises of modern progress, they helped the world on its onward march, . . . The reward is not to be found in more vessels sailing laden with wares . . . but in the consciousness of the unselfish performance of good work, of assistance rendered to the cause of freedom, and to the improvement of man's lot on earth."

J. J. JUSSERAND.

Washington, March, 1911.

FRANCE IN THE MIERICAN REVOLUTION

FRANCE IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Chapter I

Whether the American colonies would have succeeded in their struggle for independence if they had not received aid in men and money from France, is an interesting and not a simple question. A study of the period impresses one with the difficulties under which the colonists suffered, — difficulties which might well have proved insurmountable, had the colonists been left entirely to their own resources. Naturally we assume that what did occur must have occurred, that because the English did not succeed in reducing their rebellious colonists to subjection, there was no possibility of their doing so. We can, indeed, be certain that with the growth of population in this country, its people, sooner or later, would have become independent of foreign rule ; but it was entirely possible that the struggle begun in 1775 should have ended in disaster, and the history and development of the United States have been different.

The most important factor working for the colonists was the extraordinary incapacity manifested by their opponents. Less than twenty years earlier, England had conducted a war against France, in which ber armies and navies had displayed skill, vigor, and heroism to a degree exceeded in few great contests.

But the English government had sadly changed from the days in which Pitt was minister to those in which it was guided by North and controlled by George III. The Seven Years' War was one of the most glorious epochs in English history, the American Revolution was one of the most inglorious. A contest that had been precipitated by folly was conducted with stupidity; in seven years of fighting with their own colonists, not one English officer gained a first-class reputation ; the movements of the English armies were sluggish, their generals were inefficient, golden opportunities were lost, great advantages were frittered away. Gerard, the French minister at Philadelphia, said with much truth : " If the English had shown themselves in America as we have seen them elsewhere, only too active, confident, and courageous, they would have met with little resistance." ^

But if George III did not know how to select good generals or inspire vigorous action, he was resolute in his purpose. If he was not wise he was stubborn, and if the colonists did not encounter skillful opponents, they had to endure many years of fighting. A long contest our ancestors were in many respects unfitted to meet, and the reason for this unfitness was in their form of government. If the resources of three million people, fairly prosperous, intelligent, and courageous, could have been properly utilized, it would have been impossible for England to reduce them to subjection, though Chatham had commanded her councils, Marlborough her armies, and Nelson her fleets. But while a body with the limited powers of the Continental Con-

^ Gerard to Vergennes ; Doniol,iii, 319. Most of the citations from the French official correspondence are taken from the collection in Doniol's in-valuable work, La Participation de la France hV ijtablissement des Etats Unis d^Amirique, cited as " Doniol."

gress might suffice during a brief season of patriotic enthusiasm, enthusiasm will not take the phice of an effective government. The chai-acter of the Congress deteriorated, and the helplessness into which that body was plunged rendered a seat in it unattractive to able men. Having no power to raise supplies or compel the formation of an army, it was at the mercy of the several states, and to expect vigoi'ous action from thirteen different governments, was to show small knowledge of human nature. If the French King had not interfered, wrote his minister, "there is every reason to believe that the employment of the means of resistance would not have corresponded to the desire to maintain independence." This judgment may have been wrong, but as the war pi'ogressed the difficulties in raising, fitting, and equipping soldiers grew steadily greater, and a strong desire to be independent would not have secured independence if there had been no armies to fight for it.

The inherent weakness of the government hardly threatened greater danger to the patriot cause than the evils resulting from economic mistakes. If the blood circulating in the veins is corrupted, there can be no health in the body ; when the financial system of the country was hopelessly diseased, the existence of the Republic was threatened. The issue of an irredeemable currency proved more dangerous to our country's liberties than the invasion of Burgoyne or the treason of Arnold. The land possessed resources, and there were plenty of men patriotic enough to be willing to use them; but in the financial confusion that prevailed when a continental bill for ten dollars was worth only ten cents, when a pair of boots cost one hundred dollars, and butter and sujrar sold for three dollars a pound, when four months' pay of a private would not purchase a bushel of wheat and the pay of a colonel would not buy oats enough for his horse, when a wagon-load of money, as Washington wrote, would hardly purchase a wagon-load of provisions, it is not strange that the soldiers of Valley Forge walked barefooted in the snow, and the regiments of New Jersey and Pennsylvania deserted the colors under which they were starving.*

A currency that had no value and a government that had no head were the gravest perils to the success of the American Revolution. How serious they were may be judged from the writings of the most sagacious of American patriots, and the one who, from his position as commander-in-chief, had the fullest knowledge of the dangers of the situation. "Our affairs," Washington wrote in 1778, " are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been since the commencement of the war . . . the common interests of America are mouldering and sinking into irretrievable ruin if a remedy is not soon applied." ^

And a few months later, he wrote again : " The rapid decay of our currency, the extinction of public spirit, the increasing rapacity of the times, the want of harmony in our council, the declining zeal of the people, the discontents and distresses of the officers of the army, and, I may add, the prevailing security and insensibility to danger are symptoms, in my eye, of a most alarming nature. If the enemy have it in their power to press us hard this campaign, I know not what may be the consequence. Our army as it

* Hatch, Administration of the American Revolutionary Army, chap. 7. ^ Writings of Washington, Sparks's edition, vi, 151.

now stands is but little more than the skeleton of an army." '

" I have never yet seen the time," he writes again in 1779, " in which our affaii-s, in my opinion, were at so low aji ebb as at the present." ^

Repeatedly in the long years of weakness and distress, Washington declared that unless aid came from France, the army would dissolve and resistance cease. "Unless a capital change takes place soon," he writes in 1781, " it will be impossible for me to maintain our posts and keep the army from dispersing." ^ With melancholy iteration came the statements of the difficulties in which the great patriot was involved, with a scanty army, that was often on the verge of dissolution, usually unpaid and sometimes unfed, with requests for recruits meeting a feeble response, and with a disordered currency, rendering the pay promised the men almost worthless, even if the promise had been kept.

Nor can we disregard the fact that a considerable portion of the people, a minority probably, but a minority prosperous and influential, had little sympathy with separation from the mother country, and that even among the " patriots " there could be no strong feeling for the newly created Republic. Their affections were for the states to which they belonged ; there was no united country for whose benefits they were grateful, to whose memories they clung, and of whose glories they were proud. A strong desire to be rid of the tyranny of George III was not an impulse so powerful as patriotic zeal for a beloved fatherland.

^ Writings of Washington, Ford's edition, vii, 451, 452. 2 Writings of Washington, Sparks' s edition, vi, 252 (note). 8 Ibid., viii, 38, 39.

In our admiration for the great men of the Revolution, we are apt to overestimate the vigor of resistance shown by the people of the thirteen colonies as a whole. The history of the period is by no means one of united zeal, or of strenuous self-sacrifice for the common cause. It was natural that the French should complain of allies whom they found less zealous than they hoped, but their criticisms cannot be wholly disregarded. " I am beginning to have a poor opinion of their firmness," Vergennes wrote 'of his new allies to the French minister at Madrid, ". . . their Republic, unless they correct its faults, . . . will never be more than a feeble body capable of little activity. ... I must own that I have little confidence in the energy of the United States." ^

The people of the United States have displayed energy, both in peace and war, to a degree never excelled, but they have been formed and developed under a more benign government than that the weakness of which Washington as well as Vergennes deplored. Prosperity not only brings happiness, but it develops virtues. The unequalled readiness with which our people in a later day responded to calls for the public need, while largely due to the influence of a wisely framed government, was in part the result of long years of increasing wealth and well-being.

The French minister at Philadelphia was an intelligent, and not an unfriendly, observer of the people among whom he was thrown ; and he owed to his superiors the duty of describing the condition of American affairs with accuracy. " Personal disinterestedness / and pecuniary probity," he writes, " do not illustrate the birth of the American Republic. All the agents

^ Vergennes to Montmorin, Nov. 27, 1778 ; Doniol, iii, 581.

have obtained exorbitant gains for their manufactures. . . . The spirit of mercantile cupidity forms, perhaps, one of the distinctive characteristics of the Americans, especially those in the north, and doubtless this will influence the future destinies of the Republic." ^

Such criticisms might be disregarded as coming from foreigners prone to judge harshly the conduct of another nation. To the unfavorable judgment of Gerard we might oppose the fervent praise of La Fayette. If the one reflected tl\e ardent confidence of amiable youth, the other savored of the suspicious apprehension of cynical maturity. But Washington's opinions of the situation were little more favorable than those of foreign observers. " Speculation," he wrote, " Peculation, Engrossing, forestalling, with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue." ^ Similar charges could be made in our civil war, and perhaps in all wars of all nations, but there is nothing to show that disinterestedness was stronger in 1776 than in 1861, and much to show that it was rarer.