Vergennes’s Response to News of the Preliminaries Editorial Note
Vergennes’s Response to News of the Preliminaries
On the evening before the signing of the Preliminaries, Franklin wrote to inform Vergennes that the preliminary articles had been drawn up and to express the hope that he would soon be able to send him a copy.1 The news could not have come as a complete shock to the French foreign minister,2 but he was pleased neither with the content of the articles nor the clandestine manner of their negotiation. Both he and Rayneval believed that America had undercut France and Spain in their negotiations by concluding a treaty before European negotiations were complete.3 When Franklin called on Vergennes a few days later, Vergennes made him aware “that his proceeding in this abrupt signature to the articles had little in it, which could be agreeable to the King.” Franklin excused himself and his colleagues “in the best manner he could,” and informed Vergennes that the American commissioners planned to send the preliminary articles to Congress as soon as arrangements had been made to secure a British passport for the vessel that would carry them. Vergennes cautioned that dispatching the terms at that time might raise unwarranted peace hopes in the United States,4 but the Americans were not put off. The commissioners met at Laurens’s residence on 11 December, and designated Jay and Adams to draw up a joint letter to accompany the preliminary articles. The two men set to work immediately. The next day Adams made some additions to the draft and then took it to Laurens and to Franklin for further modifications, ensuring that it represented the combined thinking of all four men. While the greater part is in Adams’s hand, Jay and Laurens each contributed a paragraph.5
By the time the letter, dated 14 December, had been completed, the commissioners had received a British passport for the General Washington, Captain Joshua Barney, the ship that would carry their dispatches, including the preliminary articles of peace, to Congress.6 When Franklin informed Vergennes that the ship was about to depart, Vergennes sharply rebuked the Americans for violating Congress’s instructions and rashly arousing expectations of peace without first informing themselves of the state of Franco-Spanish negotiations with the British.7 Shrewdly intimating how much the British would like to see an open break between the two allies, Franklin assured the French Minister that nothing in the preliminaries was contrary to the interests of France, and that peace would not take place between Britain and America until the Anglo-French treaty was concluded. Franklin was even able to persuade Vergennes to ship the first installment of the last French loan of six million livres tournois on the General Washington.8
1. See , 38: 378.
2. One of Vergennes’s intelligence agents in London sent him a copy of a letter from the Home Secretary to the Bank of England reporting prematurely that peace preliminaries would be signed by Great Britain and the United States on 23 Nov. Anonymous to Vergennes, 22 Nov. 1782, L, FrPMAE: CP-A. Previously, JA had indiscreetly shown a draft of the preliminaries, except for the secret article, to the duc de la Vauguyon, France’s ambassador at The Hague. , 3: 90; , 382.
3. Both Aranda and Rayneval believed that the signing of the preliminaries was one of the factors that enabled Britain to demand higher equivalents for ceding Gibraltar than France and Spain could accept. See Rayneval to Vergennes, 25 Dec. 1782, FrPMAE: CP-A, 539: 314–17; and , 404–5.
4. Vergennes to La Luzerne, 19 Dec. 1782, , 1: 727–29.
5. See the American Peace Commissioners to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 13 Dec. 1782, LS, DNA: PCC, item 86, 254–59.
6. The General Washington did not depart until 17 Jan. 1783, three days before the general peace treaty was concluded. See , 6: 328, 330n; and , 38: 459n., 560–61.
7. As BF had predicted to Oswald (see Oswald’s Notes on Conversations with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, 7[–9] Aug. 1782), signing the Anglo-American preliminary treaty effectively neutralized the United States. For the perspective of France and the fears of the pro-French party in Congress, expressed before news of the general peace reached the United States, see “Congress Debates the Commissioners’ Conduct” (editorial note) on pp. 334–40; and for the commissioners’ defense of their decision, JJ to RRL, 19 July 1783, both below; and William C. Stinchcombe, The American Revolution and the French Alliance (Syracuse, N.Y., 1969), 195–99.
8. See BF to Vergennes, 15 and 17 Dec., and Vergennes to BF, 15 Dec. 1782, , 459–60, 461–62, 464–66. On the French loan for 1783, see , 38: 481, 487–89; and , 7: 230–32.