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France's Friendship for the United States.

France’s Friendship for the United States.—The “French and Indian wars” with which the American settlers had to contend in the early history of the colonies long antedated the Revolution, and massacres were instigated by French policy of conquest and retaliation. In the Revolution a number of patriotic Frenchmen, nursing a long grievance against France’s ancient enemy, England, saw opportunity to enfeeble their country’s hated rival. Encouraged by Frederick the Great, who had a score to settle with England for the treachery which Bute had practiced against him in paying secret subsidies to Frederick’s enemy, Austria, while England was allied with him, by heroic efforts they succeeded in sending succor to the colonies in the form of troops (many of them Germans) under Lafayette. This is so well understood that the American historian, Benson J.Lossing, specifically points out in his writings what he calls the “superstition” that we owe our “being as a nation to the generosity of the French monarch and the gallantry of French warriors.” Revealing the motives that governed France, he writes:

In the Seven Years War, which ended with the treaty of1763, France had been thoroughly humbled by England. Her pride had been wounded. She had been shorn of vast possessions in America and Asia. She had been compelled, by the terms of the treaty, to cast down the fortifications of Dunkirk and to submit forever to the presence of an English commissioner, without whose consent not a single paving stone might be moved on the quay or in the harbor of a French maritime city. This was an insult too grievous to be borne with equanimity. Its keenness was maintained by the tone of English diplomacy, which was that of a conqueror—harsh, arrogant, and often uncivil. A desire for relief from the shame became a vital principle of French policy, and the most sleepless vigilance was maintained for the discovery of an opportunity to avenge the injury and efface the mortification.

The quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies, which rapidly assumed the phase of contest after the port of Boston was closed, early in the summer of1774, attracted the notice and stimulated the hope of the French government. But it seemed hardly possible for a few colonists to hold a successful or even effective contest with powerful England—“the mistress of the seas;” and it was not until the proceedings of the First Continental Congress had been read in Europe, the skirmish at Lexington and the capture of Ticonderoga had occurred, and the Second Congress had met, thrown down the gauntlet of defiance at the feet of the British ministry and been proclaimed to be “rebels” that the French cabinet saw gleams of sure promise that England’s present trouble would be sufficiently serious to give France the coveted opportunity to strike her a damaging blow.

Lossing sums up our debt to France in the following words:

That all assistance was afforded, primarily, as a part of a State policy for the benefit of France;

That the French people as such never assisted the Americans; for the French democracy did not comprehend the nature of the struggle, and had no opportunity for expression, and the aristocracy, like the government, had no sympathy with their cause;

That the first and most needed assistance was from a French citizen (Beaumarchais), favored by his government for State purposes, who hoped to help himself and his government;

That, with the exception of the services of Lafayette and a few other Frenchmen, at all times, and those of the army under Rochambeau, and the navy under De Grasse, for a few weeks in the seventh year of the struggle, the Americans derived no material aid from the French;

That the moral support offered by the alliance was injurious because it was more than counterpoised by the relaxation of effort and vigilance which a reliance upon others is calculated to inspire, and the creation of hopes which were followed by disappointment;

That the advantages gained by the French over the English, because of their co-operation with the Americans, were equivalent to any which the Americans acquired by the alliance;

That neither party then rendered assistance to the other because of any good will mutually existing, but as a means of securing mutual benefits; and

That the Americans would doubtless have secured their independence and peace sooner without their entanglements with the French than with it.

A candid consideration of these facts, in the light of present knowledge on the subject, compels us to conclude that there is no debt of gratitude due from Americans to France for services in securing their independence of Great Britain which is not cancelled by the services done by the Americans at the same time in securing for France important advantages over Great Britain. And when we consider these facts and the conduct of the French toward us during a large portion of the final decade of the last century, and of the decade of this just closed—the hostile attitude, in our national infancy, of the inflated Directory, sustained by the French people, and the equally hostile attitude, in the hour of our greatest national distress, of the imperial cabinet, also sustained by the French people, Americans cannot be expected to endure with absolute complacency the egotism which untruthfully asserts that they owe their existence as a nation to the generosity and valor of the French.

Though President Wilson brought back from Paris a treaty of alliance between the United States, England and France, which he asked the Senate, on July29, 1919, to ratify, and declared that “we are bound to France by ties of friendship which we have always regarded and shall always regard as peculiarly sacred,” he stated in a much earlier work, “The State,” that though the Congress at Philadelphia had explicitly commanded Franklin, Adams and Jay, the American commissioners, to be guided by the wishes of the French court in the peace negotiations, “it proved impracticable, nevertheless, to act with France; for she conducted herself, not as the ingenuous friend of the United States, but only as the enemy of England, and, as first and always, a subtle strategist for her own interests and advantage. The American commissioners were not tricked, and came to terms separately with the English.”

Having accomplished the object of giving aid in humbling England through the loss of her colonies, the French, far from remaining our friends, became our enemies, and from 1797 to 1835 we find the messages of the Presidents abounding in complaints of the treatment France was according our young merchant marine on the high seas. In1798 we found ourselves in a state of war with France. “Such an outburst had not been known,” says the historian, Elson, “since the Battle of Lexington.” Patriotic songs were written, and one of these, “Hail, Columbia,” still lives in our literature. Washington was again called to the command of the American army, but beyond some engagements at sea, no blows were actually struck.

But ere long France was again at her old tricks. In1851 we were on the eve of war over the Hawaiian Islands, which France had seized, though knowing that she could never hold them save as the result of a successful war. On June 18, 1851, Secretary of State Webster instructed the American minister in Paris to say that the further enforcement of the French demands against Hawaii “would tend seriously to disturb our friendly relations with the French government.”

The third conspicuous instance of France’s persistent enmity to us was at a time when President Lincoln was harrassed by the distressing events of the most critical hours of the rebellion and the possibility of England and France together undertaking the cause of the Confederacy. England had been approached by the Emperor, NapoleonIII, with a proposal for an alliance, and in both countries the Union cause was at its lowest ebb.

Justin McCarthy in his “History of Our Own Times” (II, p.231) says: “The Southern scheme found support only in England and in France. In all other European countries the sympathy of the people and government alike went with the North.... Assurances of friendship came from all civilized countries to the Northern States except from England and France alone.”

While the Northern and Southern States were engaged in a death grapple, NapoleonIII was defying the Monroe Doctrine by invading Mexico, and in1862 was sending instructions to the French general, Forey, as follows:

People will ask you why we sacrifice men and money to establish a government in Mexico. In the present state of civilization the development of America can no longer be a matter of indifference to Europe.... It is not at all to our interest that they should come in possession of the entire Gulf of Mexico, to rule from there the destinies of the Antilles and South America, and control the products of the New World.

After Lee’s surrender General Slaughter of the Confederate army opened negotiations with the French Marshal Bazaine for the transfer of 25,000 Confederate soldiers to Mexico, and many distinguished Confederate officers cast their lot with the French to establish Maximilian on the throne. General Price was commissioned to recruit an imperial army in the Confederate States. Governor Harris of Tennessee and other Americans naturalized as Mexicans and now took the lead in a colonization scheme of vast proportions. The North became thoroughly alarmed. A French army co-operating with Confederate expatriates could not be tolerated on the Mexican border.

The government at Washington lodged an emphatic protest with the French government, and an army of observation of 50,000 men under General Sheridan was dispatched to the Rio Grande, ready to cross into Mexico and attack Bazaine at a moment’s notice. The American minister in Paris was instructed by Seward to insist on a withdrawal of the French forces from Mexico, and as the French government was in no position to engage in a war in a distant country against a veteran army of a million men it was forced to yield.

“The Emperor of the French,” writes McCarthy (p.231), “fully believed that the Southern cause was sure to triumph, and that the Union would be broken up; he was even willing to hasten what he assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was anxious that England should join with him in some measures to facilitate the success of the South by recognizing the Government of the Southern Confederation. He got up the Mexican intervention, which assuredly he would never have attempted if he had not been persuaded that the Union was on the eve of disruption.”

The French populace was enthusiastically on the side of Napoleon in the Mexican adventure, as attested by the proceedings in the French legislature, especially by the scenes in the Senate, February24, 1862, and in the Corps Legislatif, June26 of the same year, when Billault, Minister of Foreign Affairs, spoke on French aims in Mexico. On March23, 1865, Druyn de Lluys, the French Premier, notified Mr.Seward, our Secretary of State, that American intervention in favor of Juarez, the Mexican patriot, would lead to a declaration of war on the part of France. The necessary military preparations had been made by Marshal Bazaine, who, as related by Paul Garlot in “L’Empire de Maximilian” (Paris, 1890), had erected “fortified supports” at the United States frontier and made certain “arrangements” with Confederate leaders.

“In our dark hours and the great convulsions of our war,” said Charles Sumner, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate, in New York, September11, 1863, “France is forgetting her traditions.”

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