XVI. hière, the historian of Poland, Vergennes paid his CHAP. debts and recommended him to Franklin, who 1777. gave him a conveyance to the United States, and explained to congress how much he had done for the freedom of his country. Stormont called him an assassin," as he had called the American deputies malefactors that deserved the gallows. In April and May, Joseph the Second of Austria passed six weeks at Paris. In conversation he was either silent on American affairs, or took the side which was very unpopular in the French capital;1 excusing himself to the Duchess of Bourbon by saying: "I am a king by trade;" nor would he permit a visit from Franklin and Deane, or even consent to meet them in his walks; though he received from the Tuscan minister, the Abbé Niccoli, who was a zealous abettor of the cause of the insurgents, a paper justifying their conduct, and explaining the extent of their resources. Ships were continually leaving the ports of France for the United States, laden with all that they most needed, and American trading vessels were received and protected. Care was taken to preserve appearances, so that the British government, which knew very well what was doing, might not be compelled to declare war against France, for each nation wished to postpone hostilities. When Stormont remonstrated, a ship bound for America would be stopped, and if warlike stores were found on board, would be compelled to unload them; but presently the order would be forgotten, the ship would take in its cargo and set sail, and 1 Stormont to Suffolk, 22 May, 1777. XVI. CHAP. the ever-renewed complaints of the English ambas sador would be put aside by the quiet earnestness 1777. of Vergennes and the polished levity of Maurepas. The use made by American privateers of every convenient French harbor was a more defiant violation of public law. The king refused to seize and restore their prizes; but orders were given that American privateers should be admitted into French harbors only in cases of extreme urgency, and should be furnished with no more than enough to enable them to regain their own ports. For all that, the "Reprisal," after replenishing its stores at Nantes, cruised off the French coast, and its five new prizes, one of which was the royal packet between Lisbon and Falmouth, were unmoored in the harbor of L'Orient, the captain giving out that he intended to send them to America. Stormont hurried to Vergennes to demand that the captive ships, with their crews and cargoes, should be delivered up. "You come too late," said Vergennes; "orders have already been sent that the American ship and her prizes must instantly put to sea." The "Reprisal" continued its depredations till midsummer, when it was caught by the British; but before its capture, two other privateers were suffered to use French harbors as their base. The facts were open; the excuses deceived no one; the rule of public law was not questioned. Stormont remonstrated incessantly, and sometimes with passion; but the English ministers were engaged in a desperate effort to reduce their former colonies in one campaign, and avoided an immediate rupture. While unmeaning assurances of a wish for continued peace were repeated by rote, Vergennes never dissembled to himself that his policy was inconsistent with every duty towards a friendly power; he professed no justification, except that England was not a friendly power, but an inveterate enemy whose enfeeblement was required for the future tranquillity of France. His measures were chosen to promote the independence of the United States, with a full knowledge that they led necessarily to an open war. Complaints and rejoinders were unceasing; but both parties were reluctant to lay down in writing the principles of national law by which they regulated their conduct. France always expressed the purpose to conform to treaties, and England would never enumerate the treaties which she wished to be considered as still in force. A profession of neutrality would have been resented. by England as an insult and a wrong; Vergennes, though in the presence of Lord Stormont he incidentally called America a republic, never recognised the Americans as a belligerent power, but viewing the colonies as a part of the British dominions, threw exclusively upon England the burden of maintaining her own municipal laws. England claimed that France should shut her harbors against American privateers; and Vergennes professed to admit them only when in distress, and to drive them forth again without delay. England insisted that no arms or munitions of war should be exported to America, or to ports to which Americans could conveniently repair for a supply; Vergennes, rather acknowledging the rightfulness CHAP. XVI. 1777. XVI. 1777. CHAP. of the demand, represented the Americans and their friends as escaping his vigilance. England was uneasy at the presence of American commissioners in Paris; Vergennes compared the house of a minister to a church which any one might enter, but with no certainty that his prayers would be heard. England claimed the right of search; Vergennes admitted it in the utmost latitude in the neighborhood of any part of the British dominions, but demurred to its exercise in mid-ocean. England did not scruple to seize and confiscate American property wherever found; France held that on the high seas American property laden in French ships was inviolably safe. England delayed its declaration of war from motives of convenience; France knew that it was imminent and inevitable, and prepared for it with the utmost diligence. CHAPTER XVII. PREPARATIONS OF EUROPE FOR THE CAMPAIGN OF 1777, CONTINUED. THE ASPECT OF SPAIN ON AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 1777. XVII. 1777. FRANCE preferred to act in perfect concert with CHAP. Spain, which by her projection into the Atlantic seemed destined to be the great ocean power of Europe, and which, more than any other kingdom, was touched by questions of colonial independence. One of her own poets, using the language of imperial Rome, had foretold the discovery of the western world; her ships first entered the harbors of the New Indies, first broke into the Pacific, first went round the earth; Spanish cavaliers excelled all others as explorers of unknown realms, and, at their own cost, conquered for their sovereigns almost a hemisphere. After a long period of decline, this proud and earnest people, formed out of the most cultivated races and nations, Aryan and Semitic, Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Jews, Gothic Germans, and Saracens, counting among its great |