The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (89 page)

Congress had instructed the commissioners "to press for the immediate

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Van Doren,
Franklin
, 564-75.

and explicit declaration of France in our favor, upon a suggestion that a reunion with Great Britain may be the consequence of a delay." These initial instructions did not mention an alliance; in a few months, however, Congress authorized the commissioners to seek closer ties to France. For their part the French were determined to guide their policy by two principles -- they would enter no agreement that permitted the Americans to settle for anything less than independence, and they would not act without a formal commitment from Spain.
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The negotiations proceeded slowly, with events in America serving to pull the two sides apart and then to push them together. In February 1777 the commissioners informed Vergennes that the United States would promise not to make a separate peace with Britain in return for the same guarantee from France. The next month they offered to join France and Spain in an alliance. Vergennes, uncertain of the war's progress, delayed, and the Spanish government would not even allow Arthur Lee to enter the country when he tried to present the American case.
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The commission continued over the summer to press for French recognition and a large loan. In November, at the time news of Howe's capture of Philadelphia arrived, their efforts seemed futile. On December 4, however, messages were received telling of Burgoyne's capture. Within a few days Vergennes invited the commission to renew the proposal for a Franco-American alliance. Franklin drafted it, and on December 17, 1777, Vergennes agreed that France would recognize the United States and enter into an alliance. But, before anything could be signed, Spain must be asked once more to join France and America. By the end of the month the Spanish refused, but Vergennes -- his anxiety raised by knowledge that Deane and Franklin had talked with Paul Wentworth, a British agent dispatched to sound them out about reconciliationdecided to proceed alone.
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The two sides signed a treaty of friendship and commerce and a treaty of alliance early in February 1778. The commercial treaty included a most-favored-nation clause and opened up several ports in the West Indies and France itself to American vessels without restrictions. The treaty of alliance, which was to come into effect only if France and Britain went to war (a virtual certainty), declared that the purpose of the two nations was to maintain the liberty and independence of the

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United States. Everyone recognized that the eighth article of this treaty was crucial: "Neither of the two Parties shall conclude either Truce or Peace with Great Britain, without the formal consent of the other first obtained; and they mutually engage not to lay down their arms, until the independence of the United States shall have been formally or tacitly assured by the Treaty or Treaties that shall terminate the War." Almost as important was France's promise not to claim any English territory on the continent of North America and its agreement that any such territory captured in the war would belong to the United States.
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After the signing, the treaties were sent on their way to America, arriving on May 2, just ahead of the proposals from Britain for reconciliation. The British government, however, did not mean to recognize American independence. The French treaties received the approval of Congress on May 4. By June 14, 1778, France and Britain were at war.

Britain now faced immense strategic problems, to say nothing of internal political and financial strains. Before Burgoyne's collapse at Saratoga, British strategy had followed an erratic course. Sandwich complained in December 1777 that the navy had not been well employed, carrying troops here and there in convoy duty and never really using its own strength effectively. His statement described clearly enough what the navy had done, and his argument made at the same time that, properly used, the navy might strangle the colonies by raiding and blockading their ports suggested one sort of strategy available to Britain. A great maritime power, as Britain was in the eighteenth century, could have chosen to fight a naval war. But when Sandwich advocated this strategy, Britain had just seen a very different sort of plan, a land campaign far from the support of the navy, bring disaster.
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Sandwich's advocacy of the sea notwithstanding, neither he nor anyone else had thought through Britain's problems in the war. Nor during the first two years had Britain fought with any general, or overall, conception in mind. The war had not begun on British terms, and in marching to Lexington, Gage had not chosen the circumstances for a war with America. He had acted with a much more limited purpose in mind and then surprisingly had been locked up in Boston for almost a year. From Boston, Howe had taken the army to Halifax and returned with

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a massive force to New York, where he sought to destroy Washington's army. That design preoccupied him for the next fifteen months, although his expedition against Philadelphia in summer 1777 also looked toward bringing loyalists in southern Pennsylvania into the open. Among Howe's difficulties one stood out: an imperfect understanding that putting down a rebellion and fighting a war are not necessarily the same thing. The ministry at home shared his confusion and never really decided which of the two they were doing or how the two were related. In giving approval to Burgoyne's plan to isolate New England, the government presumably had hoped to make a military operation serve a political purpose. Had Burgoyne made his way to Albany with his army reasonably intact, he would indeed have damaged the American cause, especially if in his progress to the Hudson he had smashed Gates's army.

Burgoyne's surrender and the entrance of France into the war forced British leaders to rethink their problems, but they attained no greater coherence in planning. At first, as news of Saratoga trickled in, it seemed that all had been made clear. Sandwich evidently now felt certain enough to call into question all previous efforts and advocated in their stead a naval war, arguing that of all strategies it alone offered a means of wearying the Americans until their will to resist crumbled. During the winter of 1777-78, a naval war won over the ministry and gained the support of Amherst, probably the most admired military leader in the nation, and of the king himself. What moved these men after Saratoga was a feeling that France's coming into the war was inevitable and that Spain would follow. There was something approaching relief in their letters and conversations during the winter. They were back on familiar ground, a war with the Bourbon powers. Still, they did not welcome this war; in fact, its approach filled them with dread. But at least it was comprehensible, as the colonial rebellion was not. As Sandwich remarked in the long assessment he provided North -- France and Spain are "at bottom our inveterate enemies." Amherst told the king that the colonial war was now a secondary consideration in a situation in which the primary concern had to be France. Use the navy to block up the colonial ports, Amherst urged; if anything could make the Americans see reason the navy could, by squeezing them hard.
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A little of this persuaded North, who felt despair at Burgoyne's failure and seemed to want nothing so much as to escape office. The king, after receiving the secret reports on the course of Franco-American nego-

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tiations, grasped the new situation as quickly as anyone. After talking with Amherst, he began speculating on strategies appropriate for the coming war. Among them was a proposal, apparently Amherst's, to withdraw altogether from the colonies and, after strengthening Canada, Florida, and Nova Scotia, to attack France and Spain in the West Indies and Louisiana. A land war against the colonies, he wrote North in February, combined with a war with France and Spain "must be feeble in all parts and consequently unsuccessful."
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On March 8, 1778, these assessments produced instructions to General Henry Clinton, who had replaced William Howe as commander in chief. The primary operations would now be conducted from the sea, and Clinton was ordered to cooperate with the navy in raids against the American coast from New York to Nova Scotia. Clinton was also to prepare an attack against the Carolinas and Georgia, long considered the soft spots in American resistance. Since these new efforts reduced the importance of Philadelphia, Clinton was instructed to pull his forces back to New York, although Germain, who prepared these orders, gave Clinton discretionary authority to remain if local conditions warranted keeping troops there.
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Five days later, when the French government announced that it had signed treaties of amity and commerce with the United States, these instructions were virtually cancelled. Though Britain and France would not be at war until June 1778, it was now certain, and the disposition to strike France first could now become policy. For a few days the king, North, and Amherst discussed the possibility of taking all British forces out of the colonies, but by March 21, when a second set of orders was drafted by Germain, nothing so drastic seemed necessary. Still, the new strategy called for a shift in direction and of resources. The planned naval blockade was not explicitly given up, but it was no longer accounted of first importance. The main effort would now be against France -- "faithless and insolent" in the king's bitter phrase -and Clinton was ordered to make it. He was to send an expedition of 5000 troops against St. Lucia in the West Indies, 3000 more to reinforce the Floridas, and withdraw the remainder to New York City, which was to be held to strengthen the negotiating position of the Carlisle Commission, diplomatic agents who were about to be dispatched to America yvitb instructions to conclude peace with the rebels without

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agreeing to independence, a condition both ridiculous and pathetic.
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The ministry decided almost without thought to attack the French in the West Indies. The islands were a familiar arena, the cream of the British army was in America, and the military resources for an attack across the Channel simply did not exist. Nor did the will, and the possibility was not even considered.
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The West Indies were a rich prize. The economics of mercantilism seemed to suggest that the islands possessed much more value than the continental colonies. Certainly the West Indies trade returned much greater profits than trade with the mainland. The West Indies merchants clamored for protection in 1778, as always, and given the value of their business they were hard to put off. Had they been silent the result would have been the same. Striking the French in the West Indies seemed virtually preordained, and the decision was easily made.