I, Our Debt to France: II, What Lafayette Did for America (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

James Hosmer Penniman

9780260376633: I, Our Debt to France: II, What Lafayette Did for America (Classic Reprint)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0260376639 ISBN 13: 9780260376633

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2019

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Excerpt from I, Our Debt to France: II, What Lafayette Did for America

Early in 1776 Congress sent Silas Deane, a grad uate of Yale of the class of 1758, as commissioner to France to propose an offensive and defensive alliance and a treaty of commerce. Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, received Deane with cordiality and benevolence and told him to consider himself under the immediate protection of the King of France, and in case of any insult or molestation to complain directly to himself and to depend on receiving the most satis factory redress; that, though talk of an alliance was premature, his government would show its good will by allowing the Americans to purchase supplies secretly.

There was then no factory in America where muskets or cannon could be made in any quantity, and it was almost impossible to obtain gunpowder. July 20th Deane had another interview by appointment at Versailles with Vergennes and was promised muskets. Vergennes also proposed to have the arms of France erased from 200 brass cannon, if it could be done without weakening them, and if not he prom ised that others should be cast in the King's foundries. Vergennes sent De Chaumont, a wealthy man, to Deane with priced samples of the uniforms worn in the French army, and De Chaumont voluntarily offered to become security to the amount of francs for the purchase of clothing for the Americans.

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