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By Root 1000 0

That was realized when in February, 1778, France entered into alliance with the Colonies after the stunning American victory at Saratoga in October, 1777, that brought with it the nearly unbelievable surrender of General Burgoyne’s army of 5,700, who were shipped home as prisoners under oath not to resume arms against America. Four months later, in March, 1778, the French informed the British government that they recognized the independence of the United States of America, and had concluded treaties of alliance and of amity and commerce with the Continental Congress upon condition that neither party should make a separate peace before England acknowledged American independence. The alliance changed the war, putting a major power on the side of the rebels and embroiling Britain once more against her ancient enemy.

*Besides trading in their own right, many were acting as agents of merchants in England, who shipped their goods across the Channel to Holland, from where they were transshipped with Dutch cargoes to St. Eustatius and thence to America.

VIII

The French Intervention

TO MAKE alliance with rebels necessarily put France at war with Britain as the governing power, which was of course the French intention. Bourbon policy was not formed out of sympathy with the Jeffersonian principle that a time comes when a people must “assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them.” That was not a monarchical idea, although enunciated by the ally whose cause the Bourbons now embraced. Less philosophical, the French motive was simple hostility to Britain, grown out of seven centuries of rivalry since 1066, and desire to redress French losses in the Seven Years’ War. Thus it was a power struggle of the Old World, not a concern with America, that brought about the French intervention that would make it possible for the American Colonies to win their separation from Britain. The alliance was composed of two treaties, one of commerce and friendship, and the other contingent upon both parties binding themselves not to make a separate peace with Britain before she acknowledged American independence.

In July, 1778, five months after signing her treaty of alliance with America, France declared war on Great Britain, to be followed a year later by Spain, in renewal of the Bourbon Family Compact. Spain’s price was a French promise to help her recover Gibraltar and Minorca.

The greatest French dread was that the Colonies would reconcile themselves with the mother country and re-establish her trade and her colonial and maritime position, restoring Britain to the pre-eminence which it was France’s chief war aim to reduce. Benjamin Franklin’s deliberate hints to the French about a possible reconciliation, and supporting signs and portents which the French thought they detected, had led them to make the treaty of alliance in the first place. Its pledge against a separate peace barred the way to French fear of settlement between Britain and the Colonies—for the moment. It was soon to revive when the British themselves proposed a settlement with the Colonies.

Seventeen days after the French entered the war, the opening fleet action that had nothing to do with America, yet that would in the long run seriously damage the British war effort, intangibly if not physically, was fought in the Channel near the island of Ushant, off the French coast. The French objective was to gain control of the Channel preparatory to invading England. Having intelligence of the sailing of two French squadrons from Brest and Toulon, the British objective was to prevent their juncture, and in case the two squadrons did join and proceed up the Channel, to attack them unless their force was “markedly superior,” and in that case to return for reinforcements. Admiral Augustus Keppel, the British commander of the Channel fleet, on sighting two frigates, outriders of the French fleet, opened fire in eagerness to bring on a battle. The usual practice of the time was for the admiral to be