government that neutrality and comparative political isolation were America's logical and necessary posture, the authority of the precedent becomes impregnable. The trail of the tradition, therefore, must wend its fortuitous but significant way back into those kaleidoscopic days when time and events conspired to precipitate the miracle of American Independence.

The preliminary inquiry must discuss the extent of French assistance in America's Revolutionary triumph, and-in the light of these historical disclosures-must fix the fact that in all human probability the Colonies could not have won their independence at the time without French aid. This premise is the point at which we pick up the trail.

French motives in sustaining the revolt of the Colonies-first covertly, finally in the openwere far from altruistic, and their primarily selfish purpose becomes, at a later moment, a pertinent matter of illuminating examination. But what

' In his introduction to James Breck Perkins' France in the American Revolution, ex-Ambassador Jusserand says: "Two distinct influences acted together to bring about the alliance of France with the new Republic: that of the statesmen and that of the nation. Among certain statesmen 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."

ever the motive, it cannot be gainsaid that from the dismal moment when the humiliating Treaty of Paris was exacted from France by Britain in 1763 terminating the "French and Indian War," down to the climax when Cornwallis surrendered Yorktown to French-American allies in 1781, there was never an hour when French influencein one way or another-in one place or anotherdid not stimulate the Colonies, encourage their aspirations for independence, and facilitate their victorious separation from the oppressive Mother Land. It may well have been that the pertinacity of this French assistance confessed an ulterior motive: but the results in terms of American advantage and salvation were the same, regardless of whether France was primarily interested in reprisals that should cripple her historic and perennial British foe.

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The Treaty of Paris, dated February 10, 1763, terminated a great international quarrel known in Europe as the Seven Years' War, and in America as the French and Indian War. From the British standpoint this struggle was simply a continuation of the long conflict between France and Great Britain for political supremacy and economic triumph. In North America "the territorial rivalry between France and England had been mani. fested as early as 1689, and continued without interruption until 1763, when France was compelled to accept peace upon terms which meant the annihilation of her proudest colonial ambitions, and the abandonment of a western empire which her adventurous subjects had made a heroic effort to retain." History of North America, Vol. VI, by Profs. Veditz and James.

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When the Duc de Choiseul signed the bitterly offensive Treaty of Paris in 1763, he is said to have consoled himself with the thought that it soon would be broken: and within five years-encouraged by the monitory frictions of the "Stamp Act"-he had devised a plan to be followed by France at the moment when the Colonists should declare their independence, and he had sent Baron de Kalb to America to watch and aid the processes of revolution. Though he shortly fell from power, his intriguing aspirations were soon caught up and galvanized by Comte de Vergennes to whom Louis XVI committed his Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To Vergennes, England was France's enemy in peace as well as war. Though his zeals were spasmodic-rising and falling in cautious reflections of the fluctuating fortunes, in the field, of the warring Colonials-Vergennes was constant in his hopes and equally in his ultimate decisions.

2

In 1775-76 there were continuous secret negotiations between France and the Colonial leaders. Turgot, the great French Minister of Finance, was the chief opponent of Vergennes' counsel: but as early as May, 1776, the latter had secured the King's consent to a loan to America of one million livres (equivalent to $181,500)—the first open and tangible encouragement the Colonists ever externally received-and the loan was formally

I Doniol's Participation de la France, Vol. I, p. 637. 2 Van Tyne in The American Nation, Vol. ix, p. 203.

voted on December 23, 1776. Meanwhile, surreptitious assistance was organizing on a large scale. America was permitted to buy arms and ammunition in France. Vergennes, Foreign Minister, and M. Caron de Beaumarchais, indefatigable semi-official partisan of the Colonial cause, were the French liaison. At first Silas Deane and then Benjamin Franklin were the American Commissioners. All transactions were clothed in secrecy because France still was nominally at peace and still dissembling in the face of vehement protests by Lord Stormont, British ambassador in Paris. Indeed, when Franklin-destined to capture the French mass imagination even as did Rousseau and Voltaire-arrived, he was "obliged to sulk about Paris in obscurity," according to the words of John Adams. Yet, by October, 1776, Deane was able to send home clothing for 20,000 men, muskets for 30,000, gunpowder, cannon, shot and shell in large quantities. Franklin's success in winning not only material resources, but also the hearts of the French Court and people is a matter of common information. Indeed, French aid to America was perhaps never more effective than during these two years when she was ostensibly at peace with England. All the necessities of war, even the gold to pay the soldiers, were sent to America through the agency

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'Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. II, p. 148.

2 Van Tyne in The American Revolution, Vol. IX.

of a new mercantile house on one of the main streets of Paris-"Hortalez et Cie."-which was the creation of Beaumarchais, with the approval of Vergennes, for the sole purpose of aiding America. But the essential contemplation is that they were sent. The mask of French neutrality prevented maximum potentialities and caused frequent embarrassments-as when a great show of official hindrance interfered with the departure of the brave young Marquis de Lafayette in March, 1777. But there is no doubting the embattling influence spiritual as well as material-which France flung into the Colonial equation during these initial years of studiously veiled alliance.

Then came the momentous Battle of Saratoga,' and Burgoyne's surrender in the North. If this providential victory was epochally decisive, it was not alone because of its military and moral effect upon the Colonies, but also because it precipitated French decision, previously hesitant, to stand forward as the open and avowed champion of American Revolution. When the news reached Paris December 7, 1777, Beaumarchais dislocated his arm in his mad rush to get this thrilling word to the King, and Vergennes sped his Colonial

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2

The Battle of Saratoga is listed in the Standard Dictionary of Facts, p. 22, as one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world, and as the battle which "virtually decided the fate of the American Revolution."

2 The American Nation, Van Tyne, Vol. IX, p. 223.