Patriot Pirates (22 page)

British spies intercepted the letter, as Deane had expected they would. They suspected it was a ploy, but weren’t certain enough of the evidence to prosecute their valuable double agent for treason. And once the decision was made to keep Bancroft on the payroll, they ran a ploy of their own, briefly jailing him in order to convince the Americans that he truly was one of them. Deane bought it completely. “I feel more for Doctor Bancroft than I can express. He deserves much from us.”

Of Aitken’s hapless terror attempt, French officials were amused by “the gravity given to the matter by the British court.” It was no joke to Bancroft, however. He later proved that he’d go to any lengths to erase any trace of his involvement.

In September Deane opened a June edition of the
Connecticut
Gazette
to discover a notice of his wife’s death “after a long indisposition.” The shocking news, he wrote, came amid “public distresses and calamities” that didn’t displace the sorrow but at least distracted his mind “into a soft insensibility of its sufferings.”

He’d been trying for a year to get Elizabeth and their twelve-yearold son, Jesse, to Europe. He now asked his brother Barnabas to obtain Jesse passage aboard a British man-of-war, the safest mode of transatlantic travel. “Though I am as obnoxious to England as any person living, yet they would not detain a lad who had taken no part.” When Jesse finally sailed three years later, Deane embraced him as “my only hope, and almost the sole object I wish to live for.”

Deane’s discouragements of 1777 didn’t diminish one undoubted triumph—the safe arrival that spring of the eight military transports he and Beaumarchais had launched at the start of the year. In presenting the good news to the foreign ministry, his diplomatic formality (“very seasonably arrived,” he reported of the vessels) couldn’t conceal his gratification over his countrymen’s reaction: “unanimous and in high spirits.”

Lord Stormont had a different reaction. “The two ships,
Amphitrite
and
Mercury
, had on board not less than thirty thousand stand of arms, four hundred tons of gunpowder, five thousand tents, and sixty-four pieces of field artillery. The arrival of these great succors has raised the spirits of the rebels and of their numerous well-wishers here.”

Amphitrite
and
Mercury
had been the first vessels sent out, followed by
Seine
and the others. “Shipped by Mr. Jonathan Williams per order of Mr. Deane,” their arrival was heralded by John Langdon as “this important event.” In Boston, John Bradford reviewed the list of supplies for his patron John Hancock and called it “a smile of heaven on us, for we really were distressed for want of them.”

George Washington personally directed the equipment distribution. The cannon were of particular importance. Most went to a large depot in Springfield, Massachusetts, that supplied the northern Continental Army under the command of Horatio Gates.

To pay for the materials, Congress repacked the ships with lumber and tobacco and returned them to France. The commodities, valued at more than 4 million livres, were eagerly received by Beaumarchais as remuneration to Hortalez & Company and to provide, at last, commissions for him and Deane.

Arthur Lee intervened. He assured Congress that the supplies funneled through Hortalez had been given without obligation by France and Spain. Since “no return was expected,” the return cargoes were public property and Beaumarchais’s attempt to claim them was thievery. Lest Congress forget who else was involved, Lee noted that although Hortalez had originally been his idea, “Upon Mr. Deane’s arrival the business went into his hands and the things were at length embarked.”

Lee was wrong about the Hortalez operation. Louis XVI had never said the supplies were gifts. Secretly providing weapons and gunpowder to a fellow monarch’s rebellious subjects had been risky, but at least if discovered it could be passed off as a commercial venture; making charitable donations in support of treason had been out of the question.

Vergennes was clear on the point. “The king furnished nothing to them, and merely permitted Monsieur de Beaumarchais to take the supplies from the royal arsenal on the condition that he replace them.” Congress embraced Lee’s version anyway. Its money woes were worse than ever. Once heard, the happy prospect of free stuff from France was too good to let go.

Congress’s perception of Beaumarchais as a royal mouthpiece had been unwittingly fostered by Deane in his early letters to the Secret Committee. After his first meeting with his new partner in Paris in 1776, he’d giddily bragged that “everything he says, writes, or does is in reality the action of the ministry.” So it’s understandable that his superiors got the idea that the Frenchman’s ardent support for America mirrored the sentiments, and more pertinently the generosity, of his king.

Lee strove to reinforce that impression. “This gentleman is not a merchant but is known as a political agent,” he wrote of Beaumarchais.” A corrupt political agent, he added, who was now trying to steal American property that “being once in his hands would never be recovered.”

Unaware of Lee’s letter campaign, Deane wrote Congress impatiently. “You are sensible of the necessity of sending remittances by every opportunity. I pray they may come care of Hortalez & Company as they have advanced for the arms and many other articles over and above their other large advances.” Arriving just days after one of Lee’s preemptive strikes about the company’s thieving designs, this looked suspicious beyond belief. The dossier of Deane’s purported scams grew thicker as a result.

If the timing of Deane’s letter about the returning transports was poor, their arrival in America couldn’t have come at a better moment. From the Springfield depot, the French-made cannon were requisitioned by General Gates. When his army battled Burgoyne at Saratoga the following October, it enjoyed the rare circumstance of fielding artillery equal to the enemy’s. This enabled Gates’s almost two-to-one advantage in numbers, and the aggressive brilliance of his cavalry commander, Benedict Arnold, to carry the day. Six thousand redcoats were captured along with forty-two cannon—by far the greatest American victory to date. Burgoyne’s bid to split the colonies was thwarted. More importantly, British prestige was shattered.

Word of the Saratoga victory reached the commissioners on December 4, 1777. They marveled that it “occasioned as much general joy in France as if it had been a victory of their own troops over their own enemies.” Beaumarchais was so excited, he crashed his coach between Passy and Paris trying to be the first to notify the foreign ministry. He may also, it was said, have been in a hurry to place a bet that the London stock market would crash on the news.

On the same day, December 4, Richard Henry Lee personally dispatched to Europe a congressional order: “Resolved, that Silas Deane, Esquire, be recalled from the Court of France.”

A
fter Saratoga, the French–American negotiation took a new dynamic. The British position clearly had weakened, improving the likelihood that peace offers might follow. That was Vergennes’s worst fear. His time to dither in talks with Franklin was running out, he knew.

Still waiting for Spain to get on board, the foreign minister bought time with a loan to the commissioners of 3 million livres. Meanwhile British officials in London decided to float the possibility, through secret contacts with the commissioners, of reconciling with America. The concessions in mind were short of total independence but offered much of the political and economic autonomy the colonists had sought at the start of the war.

The job of extending those overtures fell to Paul Wentworth, a colleague of Bancroft’s with an American background, an established life in Britain (he hoped to become a British peer), and proven ability as a master spy. Unfortunately for the British initiative, Wentworth arrived in Paris one day after verbal assurances had finally been given to Franklin and Deane (Vergennes detested Lee and refused to deal with him) that France, with or without Spain as a partner, would shortly proclaim a military and commercial alliance with America.

In a last attempt to derail the deal, Wentworth, in separate meetings with the two commissioners (again, no Lee) promised them “emoluments” ranging from cash to British knighthood to induce them to back out. He was rebuffed—but Franklin, keeping silent, purposely let the French ministry wonder about the outcome.

Vergennes could wait no longer. “The power which first recognizes the independence of the Americans will be the one to gather all the fruits of this war.” On February 6, 1778, he and the king’s other ministers signed the treaty of alliance in the name of Louis XVI and the three commissioners signed for America.

It was Franklin’s triumph above all, though Lee scrambled to take credit. “With the greatest difficulty,” he told his friends, Lee alone had persuaded the other commissioners “to insist on the recognition of our sovereignty and the acknowledgment of our independence. These were proposed by me, evaded by my colleagues.” If Deane and Franklin dared dispute this, “They will force me to bring proofs before Congress and the public, when I am sure they will shed some of their borrowed plumes.”

Deane of course was pleased by the new treaty, but his letters in the days before and after its signing were full of disenchantment. To Robert Morris, “I have no ambition of being at courts. I have seen enough of them to ease me of any such passion.” To his brother Simeon, “I am most heartily tired and only wish to retire without loss or disgrace.” To Jonathan Williams, “It is too much for men to spend the prime of their lives in vexation and anxiety for nothing but to be found fault with and blamed.”

His melancholy presaged the March 9 arrival in France of Congress’s official notice of his recall. Its wording was vague. Couched in terms “complimentary to your abilities of serving these United States,” the stated reason was that “it is of the greatest importance that Congress should, at this critical juncture, be well informed of the state of affairs in Europe.” But knowing there’d been a whisper campaign against him, Deane suspected trouble in store.

In order to better prepare his defense, he decided to stay put until Congress communicated the specific complaints against him. Beaumarchais changed his mind, persuading him to gather what documents he had and go make his case at once. Guessing that the charges concerned the many French officers taken into Continental service and the disputed Hortalez shipments, and knowing who was the main accuser, Beaumarchais assured his friend that “I have in my possession letters from this time-serving Lee” that verified the Virginian’s support of the recruitments and his approval of the Hortalez operation “in the language of active mutual trade, and not otherwise.”

Thinking a dramatic entrance would bolster Deane’s reception, Beaumarchais urged French officials to deck him with tributes suitable to a returning hero. Deane was given a portrait of the king and letters of praise from Vergennes. His pessimism eased. “I am under no apprehensions but that this will turn out greatly to my advantage, and that I shall be able to retire with honor.”

He sailed in company with France’s new emissary to America, Conrad Gerard, aboard the flagship of a seventeen-vessel battle fleet under Admiral Charles d’Estaing. Congress welcomed Gerard’s arrival on July 14. On July 15 it opened Deane’s case.

The testimonials from Vergennes were read aloud—one addressed to Congress praising Deane’s “zeal, activity, and intelligence,” the other a personal expression of the “true interest which I shall forever take in your happiness.” A letter from William Lee was read next.

Relentless in attacking his fellow commissioners in Paris, the envious and meddlesome Arthur Lee smeared Silas Deane with charges of corruption in the arms trade and in privateering. But Lee couldn’t touch Benjamin Franklin, whose “frauds and wickedness,” he alleged with typical hysteria, were kept from the public by “hush money” paid out to suppress the evidence.

Like his brother Arthur, William had been on record for years with charges that Deane, Franklin, Hodge, Ross, and Carmichael “were productive of much mischief to the general interest of America.” He was especially critical of their links to Conyngham’s expeditions, whose combination of private and public funding afforded, he believed, a convenient ambiguity. “It is hinted now that the expense of this outfit is to be placed to the public account, for the scheme has not proved a profitable one. This intelligence has made me apprehensive.”

Deane’s view of William Lee (“a greater scoundrel than I imagined”) was widely shared in Europe. The observation that “his character begins everywhere to stink” was literal in that he inspired dislike in courts across the continent when he was sent out on minor assignments. To have his letter received by Congress as a creditable rebuttal to France’s venerable foreign minister was not a good sign for Deane.

The inquiry into his conduct consumed Congress through the summer and fall of 1778, splitting it into hostile camps with the “Adams-Lee junto” on one side and, on the other, friends of Franklin and Robert Morris, who by that time had reconciled with Deane after their falling out over Tom. Observing the proceedings, Lafayette was dismayed at their rancor. “There are open dissensions in Congress, parties who hate one another as much as the common enemy.”