Franco-American Alliance (1778): France Joins the Revolution

The Franco-American alliance was created on 6 February 1778, when France and the United States signed two treaties in Paris: a Treaty of Amity and Commerce and a Treaty of Alliance. France thereby became the first great power to recognise American independence. Its money, soldiers and above all its navy transformed the Revolutionary War and played a decisive part in the American victory.

Background

France had lost most of its North American empire to Britain in the Seven Years’ War, ending in 1763, and its leaders were eager for revenge. When the American colonies rebelled, the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, saw a chance to weaken Britain. From 1776 France and Spain secretly sent money, gunpowder, muskets and other supplies to the Americans, much of it through a trading company set up by the playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

Congress sent commissioners to Paris to seek open support. Benjamin Franklin arrived in December 1776 and joined Silas Deane and Arthur Lee. Already famous in Europe as a scientist and writer, Franklin became enormously popular in French society, where his plain dress and fur cap fitted a fashionable image of American simplicity. But France was not ready to risk war with Britain while the American cause looked doubtful.

Saratoga and the treaties

The turning point came with news of Burgoyne’s surrender at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777, which reached Paris in early December. Vergennes now feared that Britain might offer the Americans generous terms and end the rebellion before France could act. On 17 December the commissioners were told that France would recognise the United States and conclude a treaty.

The treaties were signed on 6 February 1778, by Franklin, Deane and Lee for the United States and by Conrad Alexandre Gérard for France. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce recognised the United States and gave each country favourable trading rights. The Treaty of Alliance was to take effect if war broke out between France and Britain. It declared that the alliance’s essential end was the independence of the United States, and that neither party would make peace with Britain without the other’s consent. France gave up any claim to British territory on the North American mainland, and both countries guaranteed each other’s American possessions.

Louis XVI formally received the American commissioners at Versailles on 20 March 1778. Congress ratified the treaties on 4 May 1778, and news reached the army at Valley Forge, which celebrated on 6 May.

French aid in the war

Britain and France were at war by the summer of 1778, after a naval clash in June and the larger Battle of Ushant on 27 July. In America, a French fleet under the Comte d’Estaing arrived in July 1778, though early joint operations at Newport and Savannah failed. In 1779 Spain also entered the war as an ally of France, although not formally of the United States.

The alliance’s greatest results came later. In July 1780 an army of about 5,500 French soldiers under the Comte de Rochambeau landed at Newport, Rhode Island. In 1781 Rochambeau and Washington marched south together, while a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse blocked Chesapeake Bay after the Battle of the Chesapeake in September. The combined operation forced Cornwallis to surrender at the Siege of Yorktown on 19 October 1781. France also lent and gave the United States large sums of money.

Consequences

The war cost France heavily, adding over a billion livres to a royal debt that was already large. The resulting financial crisis helped lead to the calling of the Estates-General in 1789 and the beginning of the French Revolution.

The alliance itself did not survive long. Americans negotiated preliminary peace terms with Britain in 1782 without fully consulting France, though the final peace was signed in 1783 with French agreement. During the French Revolutionary Wars the United States declared neutrality in 1793, relations soured, and the two countries fought an undeclared naval conflict known as the Quasi-War from 1798. The Convention of 1800 ended that conflict and released both nations from the 1778 treaties. The United States did not sign another formal alliance until the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949.

Timeline

• 1776, December: Benjamin Franklin arrives in France as an American commissioner.
• 1777, 17 October: Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga.
• 1777, early December: News of Saratoga reaches Paris.
• 1778, 6 February: France and the United States sign the treaties in Paris.
• 1778, 20 March: Louis XVI receives the American commissioners at Versailles.
• 1778, 4 May: Congress ratifies the treaties.
• 1780, July: Rochambeau’s army lands at Newport, Rhode Island.
• 1781, 19 October: British surrender at Yorktown.

Why it matters

The alliance turned a colonial rebellion into a world war that stretched Britain’s resources from the Caribbean to India. French troops, ships and money gave the Americans the strength they lacked on their own, especially at sea, and made the victory at Yorktown possible. It remains one of the most important alliances in American history.