Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy/Chapter Two
Enter One of the Most Extraordinary Men that Ever Lived—Paris Taken by Storm—An Ambassador, Secretary of State, War, Navy, and Treasury All in One—A Courier Arrives in Paris with Startling Intelligence—Comedy of English and French Spies—Benjamin Franklin and Louis XVI Sign the Treaty of Alliance—Our Obligation to France.
MEANTIME, Lord Stormont, the British Ambassador, had not been idle. He penetrated the elaborate subterfuges and disguises by which King Louis, Deane, and Hortalez & Co., made shift to outfit the Continental Army and still keep up an appearance of French neutrality, and was in a fair way to nip the scheme in the bud, when there swept into the arena one of the greatest diplomats of all time. He was not only above disguise and deceit, all tricks and factions, but above all party lines at home and national boundaries abroad.
Being in the midst of war to-day, we can appreciate the more the amazing power wielded by this eccentric gentleman of seventy summers, who appeared in Paris in 1776, clad in a plain brown suit which the courtiers thought was the dress of an "American cultivator." He not only appeared at court—he took the court and the whole nation by storm. Listen to some contemporary accounts.
"His straight, unpowdered hair, his round hat, his brown coat, formed a contrast with the laced and embroidered coats and the powdered and perfumed heads of the courtiers of Versailles. This novelty turned the enthusiastic heads of the French women. Elegant entertainments were given him. * * * I was present at one of these entertainments, when the most beautiful woman of three hundred was selected to place a crown of laurels upon the head of the American philosopher and two kisses upon his cheeks."
"His reputation was more universal than that of Liebnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them. * * * His name was familiar to government and people, to foreign countries, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, a coachman or footman, a lady's chambermaid or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him a friend to human kind."
The remarkable thing about this was, that the "scullion in the kitchen" was right—as every chancellor in Europe knew.
There was no more need or use of secrecy. All England rang with the news. Lord Rockingham declared that this diplomat's arrival in France was a serious blow to Great Britain, more than counterbalancing the British victory on Long Island and the capture of New York. It was a common saying in London that he was of more value to the Americans than all the privateers they had sent out.
All this, of course, was not because he was the idol of the Queen and the coachman, nor even because he was soon established in one of the most exclusive country places in the environs of Paris and treated by Vergennes more like the final authority than as a suppliant from a struggling rebellion. It was because not only a large body of the English public, but by far the most powerful in brains and leadership, regarded him openly as one of the great leaders of the English race. He presented the amazing spectacle of the arch rebel and enemy of the country openly working for the independence of a province, and for the downfall of those in power, in intimate and daily correspondence with leaders of the opposition, the scientists, advanced thinkers, liberal politicians, and cultivated circles in all parts of the British Kingdom.
There was no man so familiar with and observant of English politics as he. This was Benjamin Franklin, whom Matthew Arnold called the incarnation of sanity and clear sense, and of whom Sir Samuel Romilly said:
"Of all the celebrated persons whom in my life I have chanced to see, Dr. Franklin, both from his appearance and conversation, seemed to me the most remarkable, * * * he impressed me with an opinion of him as one of the most extraordinary men that ever existed."
Not only was he an extraordinary diplomat, but one of the most successful. Those who believe that written rules and precedents bound in calfskin constitute diplomacy—or that a great ambassador is a kind of sharp special pleader sent out to drive as shrewd a material bargain as possible with the "enemy"—would do well to read the procedure of this father and master of all American statecraft. His enormous strength, carped at by all petty partisans of his time, consisted in an attitude toward his opponents so obviously fair and sympathetic, so generously conciliatory and humanly honest, that he quickly became not so much a negotiator as a mediator. His conduct, diametrically opposite to that popularly supposed to be correct for an ambassador—with his demands and his dignity and his country's honour and paramount interests and the rest of it—was that of a just and tolerant neighbour rather than that of an attorney for the plaintiff.
We shall see how this tremendous conception became eventually responsible for the healing of the breach in the Anglo-Saxon family, and the foundation of America as a world-power knit to a rejuvenated and liberated England, instead of a seaboard province hemmed in by the colonies of the Bourbons.
He arrived with instructions to make a commercial treaty with France—and to obtain such recognition as he could for the new Republic. Joined with him in this enterprise were Deane and Lee, supernumeraries in a hindering capacity. The French were by no means ready to come out into the open with active assistance. So while diplomacy languished this humorous old gentleman of seventy took upon himself tasks beside which even the immense volume of business thrown upon our embassies at the outbreak of the World War was a bagatelle.
He became the principal financier of the bankrupt Colonies. On leaving home he had subscribed every cent of his own cash to the first Liberty Loan. And upon reaching his exalted post, instead of remittances for salary, he received innumerable drafts drawn on him by Congress. This was the only way Congress had of getting any money. It drew on Franklin to pay for its powder and its cannon, its ships and its seamen, its uniforms and its supplies. Who on earth was to take this melancholy paper of a desperate adventure, they did not know. But Franklin responded, first to last, with 52,000,000 francs. Wharton, the great authority on International Law, says that he exercised the function of Secretary of State and of the Treasury in assuming these duties; of Secretary of War in purchasing and forwarding supplies, and in recruiting officers and men; of Secretary of the Navy in fitting out and manning and commissioning privateers; and of Supreme Admiralty Judge in determining prize questions and adjusting the almost innumerable controversies in which those concerned with these privateers were engaged.
It was he who engaged the services of the immortal Lafayette, whose spirit leads the American host to-day, and equipped that daring and enterprising seaman, John Paul Jones, with the guns of the Bonhomme Richard.
And then things began to happen. Rumour, always by mysterious process faster than mortal means of travel, reported that a special messenger from the United States had eluded the English frigates and was tearing toward Paris with all signs of some portentous news. The old American Nestor gathered his council about him in his retreat at Passy, and waited with great impatience. There were Arthur Lee and Silas Deane and the doubtful Bancroft—William Lee, of Virginia, and the star of the original cast, Caron de Beaumarchais. About dinner time there clattered into the courtyard John Loring Austin, of Boston. Before he even had time to alight, Franklin addressed him.
"Sir, is Philadelphia taken?"
"Yes, sir."
The old gentleman, so says an old diary, clasped his hands and returned to the hotel.
"But, sir," cried the messenger, "I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war!"
The effect was dynamic. Everyone fell to making use of this epochal and tremendous news after his own fashion. The star actor bounced into a chaise with William Lee and tore off to Versailles, the hero of his own melodrama, to tell the King, and tore in such excellent histrionic style that he turned over the chaise and broke his ribs. The rest of the staff began copying the dispatches for diplomatic action, while Franklin's valet and Major Thornton, Arthur Lee's private secretary, began making a full report of the whole for my Lord Stormont, Ambassador of Great Britain. Whatever else failed His Majesty King George III, it was not his secret service.
Franklin had been warned that there were spies in his house but had made the typical reply that he didn't mind, for he had nothing to conceal, not even from his enemies. Perhaps this explains why in the end he had no enemies. At all events, the spies were of considerable service to him at this juncture. They led Lord North to begin frantic negotiations for peace on the spot. Of course, Franklin wanted peace—as we want peace to-day, but not a Hanoverian peace.
However, it was a matter of life and death to get the French Navy behind him. And here the spies did us another good turn. It is said that Vergennes also had his agents in the Passy household. And, by dint of listening at the keyholes and picking from waste baskets and catching snatches of dinner talk, they became aware of these advances by the English.
This alarming information, added to the great influence of Franklin's personality, persuaded the Bourbon King to act at once. His whole soul was set upon the dismemberment of the British Empire. He did not care about the Colonies rising up into a great power—both on account of his own prestige and a natural aversion for republics, and because his cousin, the Spaniard, rightly opined that an American republic would be a menace to the American possessions of Spain. But a reconciliation—that was not to be considered.
The philosopher played his hand like the great genius that he was. Frank and genuine in every move, he still concealed a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more subtle mind under a disingenuous aspect, than any man alive. From the unrecognized suppliant he assumed at once the rôle of the master of the situation. All the parties came to him. Conrad Alexander Gerard, Royal Syndic of the City of Strassburg and Secretary of His Majesty's Council of State, arrived on the 17th of December, 1777, to announce that "His Majesty is fixed in his determination not only to acknowledge, but to support your independence by every means in his power."
This was the first great diplomatic triumph in our history. It was put into formal shape by treaty duly made the 6th of February following our only formal alliance. Its principal provisions were "to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence absolute and unlimited of the said United States" and that "neither of the two parties shall conclude either truce or peace with Great Britain without the formal consent of the other first obtained."
It is sufficient evidence of the impotency of old dogmas that the legend of "no entangling alliances" should have been disregarded to the saving of our very existence in the first treaty ever made—and now 140 years later again regarded for the safety of our first friend. For although it is not down on paper, no honest American can doubt that the old compact holds reciprocally to-day, and that we are bound to "maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty, and independence" of France, and conclude no separate truce or peace with the Teuton.