IN THE FALL OF 1777 IN THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES, A GREAT foreign lord who had just been received by the king with all the honor due his rank strode through the galleries with a good deal of authority, preceded by the presenter of ambassadors and serious-looking high officials. The visitor was rather handsome, young, and distinguished-looking. He glanced around him like a man used to this kind of formality, smiled fleetingly at dignitaries and courtiers he recognized as he passed by, and bowed gracefully to a few pretty ladies whom he also seemed to know. The people who were the objects of his attention showed him their satisfaction by marks of respect that, to a practiced eye, were a little too emphatic not to have a slightly mocking intention. Those familiar with the court of Versailles had long been past masters of the art of subtly coded messages delivered through shows of exquisite politeness. And the ambassador of Great Britain, the high-spirited Lord Stormont, was not taken in. In the diplomatic, political, and social playacting that made up daily activity at court, the only dupes were new arrivals from the provinces or a foreign country, regardless of their merits and their titles.
To the renewed protests of George III’s envoy against the sympathy shown by France toward the rebellious British subjects across the Atlantic, the king had responded with assurances that these were rumors, attitudes held by private individuals who held no official responsibilities. As the sovereign, he held and would continue to hold to a strictly neutral position on the question, the only way to maintain the friendly relations between Versailles and London to which he was devoted.
Lord Stormont had pretended to believe him, to take what he said at face value, but had in fact not believed a word. He knew from reports from his secret agents that war matériel shipped from French ports to the French possession Saint-Domingue was in reality intended to be shipped in American vessels from the island to American ports. He knew that almost all of French high society applauded the slightest victory of the rebels. The king may have informed Stormont that Lafayette, in sailing off to join Washington’s soldiers, had disobeyed formal instructions from the court not to leave national territory; the ambassador knew, regardless of what Maurepas and Vergennes might say, that everyone who counted in Versailles and Paris greatly favored the adventure. While Lafayette was officially an outcast, his gracious and timid wife Adrienne was treated everywhere as the wife of a hero. In cafés, literary salons, and Masonic lodges, everywhere that people talked—and the French talked abundantly and incautiously despite their frequent complaints that they lacked the freedom enjoyed by the English—one heard praise of the rebels and the brave men who had joined their fight. The French authorities spoke only of peace and good relations between France and Britain, but public opinion, from the royal family to the lowliest notary’s clerk reading the Encyclopédie, supported the enemies of George III.
It is hard to believe that Louis XVI, despite appearing innocent, weak, and indecisive, really thought that Lord Stormont was unaware of his real views and passions. The king required no urging from his ministers or his family to become anti-British, for the simple reason that he was more anti-British than anyone in his entourage, even though he had been able to conceal that fact from inexperienced men such as Lafayette.
No informed observer of French affairs could be unaware of the monarch’s predilection for the navy from his early youth, of his special interest in the navy department from his accession to the throne, or of the pressure he exerted on the ministers who had been charged with rebuilding and reorganizing the fleet. To be sure, the 1763 Treaty of Paris had imposed humiliating constraints and limitations on France. In 1769, for example, Great Britain had prevented the transport of 900 French soldiers to Mauritius; and in 1770, it had prevented the launching of six ships to combat piracy in the Mediterranean. Warships were rotting in the harbors of Toulon and Brest, unable to go out to sea, and they were pitiful in number because Louis XV had suddenly lost interest in Choiseul’s magnificent program for the presentation of ships to the king by large cities, provincial Estates, merchant guilds, and other sponsors.
Hardly had Louis XVI been crowned when he ordered that wood be secured from Prussia to build new naval units. He ordered the admirals d’Orvilliers and du Chaffault to take the fleet on maneuvers in the Mediterranean. Under pressure from the king, Navy Minister Sartines asked Necker, who was in charge of finances, for a special appropriation for shipbuilding. By the end of the year, 52 ships of the line and 45 frigates complete with excellent artillery were ready for use.
The king’s zeal regarding the navy did not stop there. He thought of sailors as well as of ships, and made some significant decisions in that regard. In 1775, he abolished the death penalty for navy deserters and proclaimed an amnesty for those who had not been sentenced and were not on the run. A decree the same year prohibited any commander of whatever rank from making insulting or humiliating remarks to his subordinates on pain of dismissal and being declared ineligible for service in His Majesty’s Navy.
A second in command who had struck a cabin boy was put in irons for two days and required to serve for a time as a simple sailor, despite intervention by powerful people on his behalf. Louis XVI made certain that sanctions were applied against officers to the same degree as against the men. These measures led to the establishment of genuine discipline. The king also made sure that the families of battle or accident victims received assistance, and he surrendered to ships’ crews the one-third of prize money that traditionally went to the crown.
Louis XVI had been passionately drawn to the sea ever since his adolescence. He collected and avidly read travel narratives and was an assiduous student of Nicolas Ozanne, a great naval draftsman. His interest in geography was such that he learned how to draw charts. So great was his devotion to the cause of the navy that shipbuilding in France was multiplied by four between 1774 and 1778. Even recruitment was improved, and the reign of Louis XVI produced a host of elite naval officers and remarkable characters ranging from Charles de Fleurieux, director of ports and dockyards, to the Chevalier de Borda, who invented instruments used to determine longitude. Ship building also launched such production facilities in France as metallurgical factories for the manufacture of cannons and anchors. The king’s activities were both concrete and humanitarian. It is well known that Louis XVI fostered the creation of the port of Cherbourg, which Calonne called “a useful splendor.” It is not so well known that it is thanks to the king that the pensions granted to old, disabled, or crippled sailors became a right. With regard to naval policy, the sailor-king was not limited to an aggressive vision of a combat navy. He also thought the navy should be engaged in commercial and scientific exchanges. It was under the reign of Louis XVI that the most brilliant chapter of the French naval epic was written.
The monarch made no attempt to disguise his interest in the Navy Council, which brought together specialists, officers, commissioners, and engineers. Among the duties he assigned to it was the investigation of responsibilities for accidents. And he could not conceal from British agents that he imposed sanctions for naval errors and that he had created a new class of “blue” officers, transferred from the land forces. Equally widely known was his interest in geographers, researchers in all scientific disciplines related to the sea, and navigators seeking to discover and explore new territories. And the king himself prepared the logistics for the expedition of La Pérouse, for whom he felt admiration and friendship, and to whom he supplied ample funds for his expedition to the Pacific. La Pérouse may have been the first European to contemplate the colossal statues of Easter Island; he rectified the map location of the Hawaiin Islands; and he discovered Necker Island. He learned of his promotion to the rank of squadron chief when he landed in the Russian Far East, and he gave Jean-Baptiste de Lesseps the assignment of taking his maps and ship’s log to France. He sailed past Samoa and headed for Tonga.
It seems that the apparently timid and indolent—except for his passionate devotion to hunting—king had never been able to stomach the declaration of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich, on February 3, 1775, in which he asserted that several countries in Europe wanted to take advantage of the state of rebellion of the American colonies to support the colonists’ plan to trade freely and equally with everyone, a plan that “King George III could not accept.” And precisely what Louis XVI wanted to establish for France and other countries was the freedom of the seas.
Lord Stormont was not mistaken about the king’s determination, as his dispatch of February 27, 1777, indicates: “M. de Vergennes said to me with the greatest apparent openness and candor: ‘I repeat, Monsieur, what I have already told you. The king, my master, will not launch a war of ambition or policy; he will not be the aggressor, but if he is attacked, he will be more stubborn and determined than his grandfather, because of the firmness of his character.’” The assessment is surprising, yet it appears to have been true.
It is likely that Lafayette was unaware of this backdrop to the American affair. He was also unaware, while he had been fighting since the summer of 1777, that thanks to Benjamin Franklin, the cause of his American friends had made great strides in Paris and Versailles. Nor did he know that the great Voltaire had asked the Duchess de Choiseul to introduce him to Adrienne so he could pay tribute through Lafayette’s wife to the man he called the “Hero of the New World,” in the hope that he would become the “Hero of Two Worlds,” through his fight for freedom. While he was unaware of the intricacies of French diplomacy, he had no doubts about the deep intentions of some government ministers, if not of the monarch himself. He had so little doubt that despite his outcast status, he took it upon himself to write to Vergennes in person that he was getting ready to weaken Britain and force it to withdraw some of its forces from America and transfer them to the East Indies; Lafayette would lead a small force to fight them there. Of course, this mad project, suggested to Lafayette by an intriguer, the Franco-Irish colonel Thomas Conway, to get rid of Lafayette so that he could assume his place as the principal French officer, after Washington was replaced by General Gates, came to nothing. The episode does reveal Lafayette’s naïveté whenever it was suggested he undertake an adventure that might make him known around the world. It was a dangerous inclination, but it is important to recognize his exceptional ability to take hold of himself and rectify his course of action whenever he recognized that he had gone astray. When he became aware of the conspiracy of Gates and Conway against Washington, he helped his commanding officer, spiritual father, and friend, with a good deal of lucidity, firmness, and humility—recognizing his own mistakes—to foil these ambitious leaders and the members of Congress who were backing them. He forgot his project for an expedition to the Indies, and after the fall of Philadelphia in September 1777, he provided, in a letter to Adrienne, a whole argument that she could use to answer those for whom this defeat raised doubts about the ability of the rebels to win in the end:
I must now give you your lesson, as wife of an American general officer. They will say to you, “They have been beaten.” You must answer, “That is true; but when two armies of equal number meet in the field, old soldiers have naturally the advantage over new ones; they have, besides, had the pleasure of killing a great many of the enemy, many more than they have lost.” They will afterwards add: “All that is very well; but Philadelphia is taken, the capital of America, the rampart of liberty!” You must politely answer, “You are all great fools! Philadelphia is a poor forlorn town, exposed on every side, whose harbor was already closed; though the residence of congress lent it, I know not why, some degree of celebrity. This is the famous city which, be it added, we will, sooner or later, make them yield back to us.” If they continue to persecute you with questions, you may send them about their business in terms which the Viscount de Noailles will teach you, for I cannot lose time by talking to you of politics.