A History of the American People

managed to survive another winter. It shrank during the cold weather, which he spent mainly in
winter quarters, but expanded again in the spring, and each year it was better. He and it learned
from their mistakes and he gradually secured longer terms of service for his men, better pay for
them, stricter articles of war, which allowed him to hang men in extreme cases, more artillery,
better transport, and reliable supplies."
By February 1778, Franklin's mission to Europe to secure allies was bearing fruit. In France he
was perhaps the most successful of all American envoys. When he had been in England, the
English ruling class, perhaps put off by his rustic clothes, plebeian manners, and artisanal
background (and accent) would not admit him to their homes, with one or two exceptions. The
French aristocracy, whether from Anglophobia, intellectual snobbery-they were much more
familiar with his learned work-or sheer curiosity, treated him as a lion. He seemed to them
another Rousseau, and a more piquant one, being an American exotic rather than a mere Swiss.
He was sponsored by Jacques-Donatian de Chaumont, a rich businessman with extensive
American interests who spent 2 million livres of his own fortune in aid to the patriots. The
Comte de Segur found positive virtue and nobility in his mean appearance: His clothing was rustic, his bearing simple but dignified, his language direct, his hair unpowdered. It was as though the simplicity of the classical world, the figure of a thinker of the time of Plato, or a republican of the age of Cato or Fabius, had suddenly been brought by magic into our effeminate and slavish age, the 18th century.' By an extraordinary conjunction, the notion of the Americans as the new Romans hit a culturally fashionable note-just at this precise moment, the rococo was suddenly yielding to the classical revival and Franklin seemed a man of the new wave. As a matter of fact, his style of living was not all that modest, either. The Duc de Croy might enthuse over the humble dinners he served to his high-born guests-'Everything breathed simplicity and economy as befitted a philosopher'-but Franklin had 1,041 bottles of wine in his cellar in 1778, rising to 1,203 before he left. He had nine indoor servants and spent freely, justifying his luxuries with a typical American moral:Is not the hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy
luxuries a spur to labor and industry?' Adams, parsimonious and puritanical, snorted that The life of Dr Franklin [in Paris] was a Scene of continual dissipation,' and he suspected, probably with reason, that Franklin was enjoying women as well as good food and drink. So what? The mission was a success, even more so with popular than with official opinion and le gratin. Jacques Necker, the great banker who was put in charge of the finances in 1776, was against involvement. He predicted it would prove financially disastrous, as it did. So was Louis XVI, on the grounds thatit is my profession to be a royalist.' But they were overruled by the
Duc de Choiseuil, the chief minister, the Comte de Vergennes, the Foreign Minister, and leaders
of public opinion like de Beaumarchais, author of fashionable comedies like The Barber of
Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, who organized public subscriptions to buy `arms for
America,' as well as pushing the government to provide more.
So from the spring of 1778 America was no longer alone. Nantes became the American supply
base in Europe. Nearby, the Department of Marine built a special foundry to cast cannon for
America. In July 1778 alone one wealthy merchant sent ten ships to Boston, loaded with
munitions. In 1782 he sent thirty. The news of Saratoga spurred the signing of a Treaty of Amity
and Commerce. Louis XVI graciously received Franklin, who was wigless, swordless, and
wearing the rusty old brown coat in which he was savaged by Wedderburn-sweet revenge!" And
France's decision persuaded the Spanish and Dutch to join in, though Spain merely backed
France in the hope of recovering Gibraltar and was never a formal ally of men it considered
rebels who might corrupt its own colonies.