The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (105 page)

One of the more curious characters Franklin encountered was Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a Frenchman with background and interests almost as varied as Franklin’s. The son of a watchmaker, Beaumarchais had developed a modest reputation as an inventor; his creativity found other outlets in music and drama. His popular play
Le Barbier de Séville
was still on the boards when Franklin arrived in Paris; he would proceed to write
Le Mariage de Figaro.
Meanwhile the playwright moved on to drama of another sort, namely the revolution unfolding in America. He became entranced with the American version of
liberté
and determined that France must midwife its birth. He urged Vergennes to back the American rebels and offered to act as secret agent supplying the support. When Louis approved the project, Beaumarchais created a front firm, Roderigue Hortalez & Co., to disguise the government’s role. A substantial amount of French (and Spanish) money flowed through Beaumarchais’s hands, winding up as weapons and other matériel in America.

Precisely what Beaumarchais was going to get out of the arrangement
was unclear. The Americans resisted repaying him, on the reasoning that the money was intended for
them,
not for him. Whatever his emotional attachment to the American cause, he apparently expected some profit for his pains. It was his bad luck to attach himself to Silas Deane, who himself came under suspicion for profiteering (and eventually came under more than suspicion when he abandoned the American cause). Beaumarchais also antagonized Franklin’s old friend Dubourg, who hoped to corner the French market for American supplies himself, and Jacques Donatien Leray de Chaumont, an intimate of Vergennes who became Franklin’s host. Franklin, recognizing the cloud over Beaumarchais, kept his distance from this ingenious fellow with whom, under different circumstances, he must have found much in common.

Others were less easily put off. A small army of young men—and some not so young—besieged Franklin, seeking commissions in the American army. After nearly a decade and a half of boring peace, the warrior class of the Continent wanted work. A Swiss officer who had served with the Dutch wished to become a lieutenant colonel under General Washington, despite never having risen higher than lieutenant for the Dutch. A veteran of ten years in the French army, writing from Spain, where nothing was brewing, thought he should be a regimental quartermaster. A student from Lyons declared that the time had come for him to accomplish something grand; he would start by killing redcoats in America. An aristocrat from Orléans explained that his forty-two years in the French army had taught him how an army of 25,000 could defeat a host ten times as large; he would be honored to share this secret with General Washington. A German student wrote from Jena declaring candidly that his family could no longer fund his education; he would fight for his daily bread. A Dutch surgeon sought to expand his knowledge of physical trauma in the only place where bodies were being blown apart on a regular basis. A British subject who had been outlawed from England after fighting with the French in Corsica declared his desire to fight with the Americans against those who had treated him so shabbily. The abbess of St.-Michel de Doullens offered the nephew of one of the nuns, a lad of eighteen who, bless his heart, wanted to support his eleven brothers and sisters as a soldier with the Americans. A mother from Châtellerault with sons to spare forwarded three for the front. A Paris matron explained that a young male relation had been serving with the royal guard of Spain but found King Carlos’s incessant hunting exhausting; he wished to rest up against the British.

There were a few diamonds amid the dross. “Count Pulaski of Poland, an officer famous throughout Europe for his bravery and conduct in defence of the liberties of his country against the three invading powers of Russia, Austria and Prussia will have the honour of delivering this into your Excellency’s hands,” Franklin wrote Washington in May 1777, sending along the man who would organize the Continental cavalry. A few months later he recommended “the Baron de Steuben, lately a Lieutenant General in the King of Prussia’s service”—and shortly to impress Prussian discipline on Washington’s troops (at which point the fact that he had been only a captain, rather than a lieutenant general as represented to Franklin, was forgiven). In another letter Franklin endorsed “the Marquis de la Fayette, a young nobleman of great expectations and exceedingly beloved here.” Fulfilling those expectations, Lafayette became just as beloved in America.

Such as these Franklin could recommend forthrightly. In other cases he either ignored the entreaties or wrote something innocuous. “The bearer, Monsr. Dorcet, is extremely desirous of entering in the American service, and goes over at his own expense, contrary to my advice,” Franklin wrote Washington regarding one worthy whose sponsors had to be appeased. Franklin assured Washington he had not given the gentleman in question “the smallest expectation” of a commission. Yet the man insisted on a recommendation, and Franklin obliged, after a fashion. Reiterating that the gentleman refused to be dissuaded, Franklin wrote, “This at least shows a zeal for our cause that merits some regard.”

Even such backhanded compliments became too much for Washington. “Our corps being already formed and fully officered,” the general wrote Franklin from Continental Army headquarters, “the number of foreign gentlemen already commissioned and continually arriving with fresh applications throw such obstacles in the way of any future appointments that every new arrival is only a source of embarrassment to Congress and myself and of disappointment and chagrin to the gentlemen who come over.” Speaking candidly, Washington admitted mistakes in the past that had continuing consequences. “The error we at first fell into of prodigally bestowing rank upon foreigners without examining properly their pretensions, having led us to confer high ranks upon those who had none or of a very inferior degree in their own country, it now happens that those who have really good pretensions, who are men of character, abilities and rank will not be contented unless they are introduced into some of the highest stations of the army.” This was impossible, as Franklin surely appreciated. Washington acknowledged the need to maintain
the goodwill of influential Frenchmen, but, please, no more officer candidates.

Yet at Franklin’s end the throngs only grew. “These applications are my perpetual torment,” Franklin wrote Dubourg in the autumn of 1777. “You can have no conception how I am harassed. All my friends are sought out and teased to tease me; great officers of all ranks in all departments, ladies great and small, besides professed solicitors, worry me from morning to night. The noise of every coach now that enters my court terrifies me. I am afraid to accept an invitation to dine abroad, being almost sure of meeting with some officer, or officer’s friend, who as soon as I am put into good humour by a glass or two of champagne begins his attack upon me. Luckily I do not often in my sleep dream myself in these vexatious situations, or I should be afraid of what are now my only hours of comfort.” Dubourg had asked just such a favor for a friend; Franklin concluded his tale of woe with a supplication: “If therefore you have the least remaining kindness for me, if you would not help to drive me out of France, for God’s sake, my dear friend, let this your 23rd application be the last.”

Franklin would have admitted in this case that he was exaggerating for effect; despite the crush of requests he never lost his sense of humor. In a moment of respite he composed a reference for all occasions.

Sir:

The bearer of this who is going to America presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes indeed one unknown person brings me another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be.

What America
needed was not men but money. By the autumn of 1777 the situation was dire. The Congress had authorized the purchase of war supplies for the American army and the construction of warships for the American navy; now that the bills were coming due the commissioners discovered they lacked the funds to pay the suppliers and
the builders. In September, Franklin, Deane, and Lee made a new appeal to the goodwill and self-interest of the French and Spanish courts.

“The Commissioners find themselves extremely embarrassed by their engagements,” they explained in a memorandum drafted by Franklin for Vergennes and the Spanish ambassador. But worse than the embarrassment to themselves was the injury to their country’s credit and cause. They briefly reviewed the events that had brought things to such a pass. Efforts to borrow money from European bankers foundered on the reluctance of the bankers to lend to America while its future hung in the balance. Ships carrying cargoes from America were lost to the British blockade. France’s refusal to countenance the sale of American prizes curtailed the revenues America had derived therefrom. The Spanish court had lately stopped furnishing funds, for reasons unexplained.

Under the circumstances, Franklin and his fellow commissioners thought they should remind the French and Spanish governments what their countries would gain by an American victory. France and Spain would secure access to the American market, which would strengthen them; at the same time Britain’s loss of its monopoly of the American trade would weaken the British, to the additional advantage of France and Spain. Lest the French and Spanish governments get the wrong impression—which was to say, the right impression—the commissioners quickly added, “They offer these advantages, not as putting them to sale for a price, but as ties of the friendship they wish to cultivate with these kingdoms.”

In fact the commissioners did put a price on American actions—an entire list of prices. Eighty thousand blankets cost 56,000 livres. Eighty thousand shirts cost 32,000 livres. One hundred tons of powder cost 200,000 livres. One hundred tons of saltpeter cost 110,000 livres. Eight ships of the line came to 7,730,000 livres. The French and Spanish governments could see for themselves what it cost to continue the war.

As previously, Franklin and the others strove to seem confident even as they warned that without assistance the American cause might collapse. Rumors were circulating of an accommodation that would allow Britain once more to claim the American commerce for itself. The commissioners denied such rumors vigorously. “They can assure your Excellencies that they have no account of any treaty on foot in America for any accommodation; nor do they believe there is any. Nor have any propositions been made by them to the Court of England.” If this sounded like protesting too much, it was intended to. “The Commissioners
are firmly of opinion that nothing will induce the Congress to accommodate on the terms of an exclusive commerce with Britain but the despair of obtaining effectual aid and support from Europe.”

Vergennes had been willing to see the Americans sweat, especially after all the trouble they had caused with their privateers, but he was not willing to see them expire. He promised enough cash to keep them going a while longer, and he hinted that France would take care of construction costs for their frigates. He also said to forget about paying Beaumarchais’s company (which corroborated the American belief that the playwright was a profiteer). Yet all this was done under cover; as before, France remained officially aloof.

“We are scarce allowed to know that they give us any aids at all,” Franklin reported to the Congress at the end of November 1777. “But we are left to imagine, if we please, that the cannon, arms &c. which we have received and sent are the effects of private benevolence and generosity.” An open alliance was still the goal, yet the phlegmatic Franklin noted an advantage in its absence: “It leaves America the glory of working out her deliverance by her own virtue and bravery.”

At that
particular moment such a prediction required a leap of faith. After the British victory on Long Island, General Howe chased Washington off Manhattan Island, across the Hudson River and New Jersey, and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Washington assumed that the British objective was Philadelphia; he began destroying boats to keep the Delaware between Howe and the American capital. “We have prevented them from crossing,” Washington wrote on December 17, “but how long we shall be able to do it, God only knows.”