186 Chapter IX
forth in Hanover, where the dynastic connection with England had brought about
many intellectual contacts. The University of Göttingen, and especially its eminent
professor, the journalist Schlözer, became the main center in Germany of anti-
American feeling.^9 Echoes of the same thing in France may be heard in the words
of Mallet du Pan, who remarked that in the American war “the dregs of America
had fought the dregs of Europe.”^10 Since Mallet du Pan and Schlözer were soon to
become leading conservative writers against the French Revolution, their lack of
enthusiasm for the American Revolution is worth more than passing notice. It is
evidence that the two revolutions looked alike to many conservatives, and that
counterrevolutionary attitudes were growing even before the French Revolution.
Many people first came to sympathize with the Americans because of dislike of
England. They more readily believed that the Americans were fighting for liberty
because they thought the British were tyrants. The British had become so wealthy
and powerful, especially in the spectacular victories of the Seven Years’ War, and
they had so often taken measures to stifle the ocean- borne trade of Continental
Europe, that a strong body of feeling in Europe looked on England with aversion
as the modern Carthage, the ruthless monopolist of the sea, the perfidious Albion
that made continental allies only to exploit them. This feeling was to be of use to
Napoleon thirty years later. It was now of use to the Americans. Frederick the
Great, for example, was no lover of rebellious subjects, but he was sufficiently an-
noyed with England to allow all sorts of pro- American sentiments to be published
at Berlin.
The French government acted basically in the same way.^11 Choiseul had fore-
seen the American Revolution as early as 1765, and looked forward to it as a main
hope for redressing the balance between France and England. The Count de Ver-
gennes returned from Sweden in 1774, shortly after the monarchist revolution
which he had helped to initiate there, to take charge of the French foreign office at
the accession of Louis XVI. Within a year, in 1775, Vergennes foresaw the possi-
bility of involvement in the American crisis. He sponsored the dramatist, Beau-
marchais, in rigging up a commercial company to convey French aid to the rebels.
He allowed or encouraged anti- British and pro- American agitation in the press.
The French government, no more addicted to republicanism than Frederick the
Great, favored the appearance of a new journal called the Affaires de l ’Angleterre et
de l ’Amérique. Beginning as early as 1776, two years before French official recogni-
tion of the United States, this journal published reports on the war, writings of
American leaders, the Declaration of Independence, and various other documents,
including several of the state constitutions.
Of all propagandists the most adroit was Benjamin Franklin. It was, in fact, a
master stroke of self- advertisement for the Continental Congress to choose him as
9 For information on Germany I am mainly indebted to H. P. Gallinger, Die Haltung der deutsche
Publizistik zu dem amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskriege (Leipzig, 1900), and to the work of my former
assistant, Dr. Gordon M. Jensen.
10 Quoted by Echeverria, op.cit., 128.
11 For what follows on France I am indebted to Echeverria, op.cit., but have also used other stud-
ies, including some of my own, of my colleague Dr. H. C. Rice of the Princeton University Library,
and, it need hardly be added, of Professor Gilbert Chinard.