That is Louis XVI on the left, and he played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, in that he granted aid to The Thirteen Colonies in 1777, but only after the battle of Saratoga demonstrated a turn in the favour of the Americans. This aid was mostly due to Louis` minister of foreign affairs, Charles Gravier de Vergennes, who saw an opportunity to avenge the English, after a scolding loss in the Seven Years War, by aiding the Thirteen Colonies in their independence. Naturally, Louis was no champion of democracy, but England was winning more control of territory in the New World, and France needed to get back in the game. This is exceedingly ironic in that Louis would lose his head about sixteen years later for not being an advocate of democracy.
I picked up the book "Our Oldest Enemy" by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky at Bookpeople on Sunday because I was searching for a volume about Franco-American relations over the past several hundred years. I haven`t read all of it, but I`m starting to get their drift. Relations have been tainted, especially over the Iraq War, which Jacques Chirac has been strongly opposed to. But being the 4th of July and all, I simply wanted to look at the role of France in the War of Independence, which grants us the freedoms that we experience today. I have to go to a movie later, so I`m just going to give you a few of the profound details that I discovered. Please read all of the mostly Wiki links with an eye for detail, and see what you come up with.
I think it is safe to say that the French played an important role in the rebels` securing a victory. "Our Oldest Enemy" maybe takes the argument too far, in the way it emphasizes that France really offered a negative helping hand. Nonetheless, the book is well researched and certainly worthy of inspection. The chapter Revolting Ally covers the right period for this blog entry, and it was here that I uncovered some startling clues. The Treaty of Alliance of 1778 has to studied carefully if any of this is going to make any sense whatsoever. By pouring money into this foreign war, the coffers of Louis XVI were completely drained! Thus, this was one significant cause for the French Revolution; oddly, this revolution modeled itself on the successful revolution of the Americas, yet Louis had backed it? These profundities must have crossed his mind as he mounted the scaffold of the guillotine!
Some of the chief French players in the conflict were mainly representatives of France, not the Americans. This doesn`t seem too unusual, yet this does not imply that they did not aid the Americans in their cause, does it? The marquis de La Fayette was a great friend to Washington and provided valuable assistance to the Colonists at Brandywine, Monmouth, and especially at Yorktown, the final battle of the war. He was both a hero for France and the Americans! He was opposed to slavery and was an early abolitionist. In the French Revolution he was a moderate and fell into the Constitutional Monarchist camp. Pierre Beaumarchis sponsored an underground network of support for the American rebels in the way of munitions, clothes, and provisions. This was in cahoots with the crown, covertly of course. Charles Hector, comte d`Estaing as a naval commander, did not always behave exactly as George Washington would have preferred. But he had to retreat to the Boston harbors for repair, after stormy seas waylaid many of his frigates. Too, he made some misjudgments when trying retake Savannah from the British, and was soundly defeated in the summer of 1777. His chief maneuvers were in the West Indies, but this was due to his goal to protect French financial interests in the New World- this seems only natural. Francois Joseph Paul de Grasse also made some benevolent contributions in some of the naval battles, and with the victory at the battle of Chesapeake in September of 1781, the French were able to blockade the Atlantic coast and helped to soundly defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown. One small blackmark seems to be the behavior of Pierre Landais against John Paul Jones. The two hated each other and were involved in quite a few rows.
The Big Picture here is that the French made a valuable contribution to the American Revolution. As immigrants floated on their boatride by the Statue of Liberty, a product of a French architect, in say the late 19th century, I can safely speculate that they are dreaming that without the Franco-contribution to America`s liberation, they could never have obtained their freedom. I still stubbornly hold this to be true, though this notion is a little unpopular today, yet mostly by arch-conservatives. Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! This slogan rings true for the American Revolution as well; Jefferson, Paine, and Adams borrowed heavily from the French Enlightenment Philosophes, such as Rousseau and Voltaire, yes it was quid pro quo across the Atlantic between the French and the Americans. Together they created the freedoms that we experience today!
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